


Strings

by DJBunn3



Category: Free!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Falling In Love, Fights, First Kiss, Link in notes, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, Promises, Red String of Fate, RinHaru Week 2018, Secrets, Sharing a Bed, there's a chaptered version too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-22 09:01:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 40,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17056832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DJBunn3/pseuds/DJBunn3
Summary: “Hey, Haru?”Rin stops, ducking his head to catch Haruka’s eye. The wind blows through his hair, sending a few red strands spilling in front of his face, and Haruka has to bite back the urge to reach out and tuck them back in place.“I hate to ask, but… Well, you still haven’t… You haven’t found the other side of my string yet, have you?”Haruka’s eyes dart down towards Rin’s finger, his heart squeezing as he follows the meter of thread until it fades out into nothingness, unlike every other string he's ever seen.He closes his eyes, unwilling to watch Rin’s face fall as he shakes his head. “No,” he chokes out, his voice distant even to his own ears. He wishes that he could say yes, and yet a selfish, horrible part of him is secretly glad that Rin’s string hasn’t fully appeared yet.“And yours…?” Rin prompts, his voice light and strained as he nods towards Haruka’s hand.“No,” Haruka says again, with less guilt.Rin looks down at Haruka’s hand again thoughtfully, his sharp teeth biting into his bottom lip for a second.“Then I guess we’ll just have to keep looking together, huh?” he decides at last.(Haruka can see everyone's red string of fate. Everyone's but his own.)





	Strings

**Author's Note:**

> (Chaptered version available [here](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1rFUfOmF9cpiINKqhNgdW64seJgVntMak?usp=sharing).)

The first time Haruka sees the strings, he’s three years old.

He’s in his mother’s lap, playing with her fingers, twisting them around in his hands over and over again. Her skin is rough and calloused compared to his, which is smooth and soft and only marred by the occasional scratch or scar from accidents at the playground. The pads of her fingers swirl inwards like an old oak tree’s rings, and her knuckles are creased with lines and wrinkles.

A flash of color catches his eye as he turns her hand over again. He stares curiously, lifting the hand closer to his eye level and studying the bright red string neatly tied around her pinky finger with interest. He’s almost sure that it hadn’t been there a second ago, and yet here it is, a neat circle of crimson with a tail that trails down to the ground.

Haruka traces the string with his index finger, then looks up at his mother questioningly. She smiles down at him, reaching up to stroke his hair back from his forehead gently.

“What is it, love?” she asks softly, a fond expression on her face. Haruka looks down at the string again, her fingers clumsy as she reaches over to slip it off of her pinky, but his fingers seem to pass right through it. He frowns in concentration, trying again with both hands, but the string remains untouched.

“Haruka?” his mother prompts, confused. Haruka says nothing, following the red line of thread with his eyes. It drips to the floor and through the kitchen to the living room, snaking around the kotatsu and over the doormat until it disappears from view.

“Where did it come from?” he asks, turning to face his mother and pointing down at the ground. She frowns, leaning over slightly and looking all around the room, missing the string entirely.

“Where did what come from?” she says at last, turning back to him. “I don’t see anything.”

Haruka blinks a few times, then reaches up to rub at his eyes and look again. When he turns around, the string is still there, as bright as ever. He’s sure that it’s there, and yet he’s the only one who seems to notice its appearance. Can she really not see it?

The door opens, and Haruka’s father walks in with an armful of groceries. Haruka’s eyes dart to his hand where, sure enough, a red thread is tied in a ring around his pinky. He follows the string from his father’s finger to his mother’s--it seems to get shorter the closer together they get, until they finally close the distance between them and it becomes nothing more than a few centimeters of red between their joined hands. His father bends down and kisses his mother in greeting, shooting a smile at Haruka before he heads off to the kitchen.

He blinks again, then looks down at his own hands. There’s nothing out of the ordinary, no red string tied to his pinky like the ones on his parents’ fingers. He double checks, triple checks, flipping his hands over and over and examining each knuckle closely, wondering why his parents have the strings and he doesn’t.

“Let me help you, love,” his mother says to his father, setting him down on the ground before turning towards the kitchen. Her string stretches and relaxes with each movement, taking a second or two to adjust to the new distance between each step. Haruka follows it with his eyes, entranced, until at last his mother disappears into the kitchen. He frowns, confused. If both of his parents can’t see the strings, maybe they aren’t really there. Maybe he’ll go to sleep and wake up the next morning and they’ll be gone, never to be seen again.

But the strings don’t go away in the morning, or the morning of the next day, or the next. In fact, more and more of them keep appearing the more time goes on. At first his parents are the only ones connected by the red string, but soon one appears on his grandmother’s finger, one on Makoto’s, one on his preschool teacher’s. They keep manifesting one by one, day after day, until there isn’t a single person without a red thread tied around their pinky.

That is, except for Haruka himself.

* * *

He learns to ignore the strings.

It’s the easiest thing to do, considering that no one else can see them. (He’d checked once, asking Makoto if he’d seen anything strange between his parents the last time they’d had a sleepover.) He never bothers to explain the strings’ presence to anyone--they wouldn’t believe him even if he did, and it’s not like it’s a necessity for them to know about them. Instead he does his best to tune them out, focus on other things, try not to let himself get distracted.

Once he learns that he can’t actually touch the strings, it gets easier to pretend that they aren’t there. Sometimes he finds himself avoiding piles of red thread tangled together on the ground, or reaching out to play with a string that’s draped across the table at school, but after a few months his reflexes adjust to accommodate them. They become a normal part of his life, just like breathing, or walking, or swimming.

Swimming, as it turns out, is one of the better additions to his life.

Not that it’s a new thing. He’s always loved to swim, ever since his parents had waded into the shallow end of the local pool with him for the first time. He savors the cool sensation of water on his skin, the distorted light bouncing off the surface of the pool, the deep blue color that surrounds him when he sinks under. But once Makoto convinces him to join the Iwatobi Swim Club together, everything changes.

At first the swim club seems too troublesome for Haruka to bother with--if he wants to swim, he can do it himself, without pesky coaches or club members getting in the way--but if it makes Makoto happy, he decides he can try it. Plus, he’s never been into the ISC’s pool room, and he’s sort of curious about what it’s like inside.

He follows Makoto around the swim club’s lobby like a lost puppy as his mother and Tachibana-san finish signing the papers. Makoto’s hands are clasped carefully behind his back as he admires the walls, which are decorated with photos of swimmers and teams posing with big smiles on their faces. His string trails behind him on the ground, looping through the hallway and out the door. Haruka mirrors his posture, rubbing his left pinky with his right index finger and thumb almost subconsciously.

There’s a big glass display case full of trophies and medals near the back of the lobby, stretching into a long hallway filled with even more picture frames. The trophies inside are big, and shiny, made of polished metal and glass and tinted all sorts of different colors. Makoto admires the biggest one, which is almost as tall as he is, while Haruka stares through the door into the changing rooms, wondering how soon he’ll be allowed in the pool. If it’s anything like the one in the photos, he’s itching to get in.

He’s so lost in thought that he doesn’t hear someone clear their throat behind him. He only snaps out of it when Makoto starts tugging on his sleeve with an, “Ah, Haru-chan, over here.”

He blinks, then turns his back on the changing rooms, his eyes catching on a long stretch of red string connected to the hand of a man in an ugly Hawaiian-style shirt.

“You’re the new members, right?” the man asks in a loud, booming voice. “Nanase and Tachibana?”

Haruka nods slowly, Makoto following his example after a second of hesitation. The man grins, showing big, pearly teeth.

“Welcome to the swim club, boys,” he says, crossing his arms across his chest. “Come with me. I’ve got a surprise for you.”

Haruka shoots Makoto a questioning look, tilting his head towards the strange man curiously. Makoto smiles reassuringly, taking a step back towards the lobby, and Haruka follows him with a sigh.

“I’m Coach Sasabe,” the strange man introduces himself as they head over to the counter where Haruka’s mom had been a few minutes ago. (He catches sight of her out of the corner of his eye, chatting idly with Tachibana-san.) “I pretty much run the show around here, so if you ever need something, go ahead and ask me, you hear?”

He slips behind the counter and points at a rack of cheap plastic animal charms, each one hanging from a brightly colored cord. “Every new member gets to pick one out,” he explains with a smile, tapping a cute penguin charm with the tip of his finger. “Go ahead and look through them, okay?”

Makoto nods, immediately setting his attention to looking through the charms. Haruka does the same, his gaze roaming over a pink jellyfish and a striped clownfish before coming to rest on a bright blue dolphin with a white underside. Despite its cheap manufacturing, its eyes appear bright and shiny, and its mold is more realistic than the other cartoonized charms, but that’s not what catches Haruka’s eye. He’s more drawn to the bright red strap the dolphin is hanging from, two centimeters or so long and arranged in a small braid at the bottom to keep it secure.

Before he knows it, he’s reaching out for the dolphin--but Makoto reaches out at the same time, clearly going for the same charm. They both pause, glancing at each other uncertainly.

“Ah, the dolphin’s a popular one,” Coach Sasabe says ruefully, shaking his head. “I’m afraid that’s the only one left. Tell you what, how about we play a game of rock, paper, scissors to see who gets it?”

“That’s alright!” Makoto chirps quickly, reaching out and carefully taking the clownfish charm Haruka had passed over earlier. “I like this one, too.”

“But Makoto…” Haruka starts to protest, but Makoto’s already smiling down at the clownfish happily.

“It’s alright, Haru-chan,” he says softly, turning to face him. Haruka hesitates a second more, then carefully reaches out to unhook the charm from its peg.

“Thank you,” he says, cupping the dolphin in his hands. The red braid lies vertically against his fingers, and for a second he lets himself believe that it’s his string, instead of just a cheap cell phone strap.

_ But the strings aren’t braided, _ he reminds himself with a shake of his head.  _ It’s not the same at all. _

“Haruka,” his mother calls, touching his shoulder gently. “Are you ready to go?”

Haruka dips his head in thanks towards Coach Sasabe, taking his mother’s hand and tucking the dolphin away inside his pocket. Makoto runs over to Tachibana-san with the clownfish dangling between his fingertips, holding it out eagerly for her to see.

“Are you excited to start at the swim club?”

Haruka looks up at his mother, surprised to find that he actually is. He gets to be in a pool, and he gets to spend time with his friend, so why shouldn’t he be?

His mother smiles at him as he nods, her eyes sparkling. “I’m glad,” she says, squeezing his hand in hers. “You’re going to love it here, Haruka. I just know it.”

* * *

Around the time he meets Nagisa, he starts to notice a pattern with the strings.

It first occurs to him when he meets Nagisa’s parents for the first time and realizes that, just like his parents and Makoto’s, their strings--their  _ string _ \--is connected. Instead of trailing off in two separate directions like most of the other threads do, it links seamlessly between the two of them. He wonders if that’s what happens when people get married--but then again, some of the other swim club members’ parents’ threads aren’t connected, even though they have wedding rings on.

He wants to ask about it, but he doesn’t dare. Despite their son’s carefree attitude and cheerful bluntness, the Hazukis don’t seem like the kind of people who’d care for questions about things they probably can’t even see. He tells himself that he doesn’t need to know about the connection, that it probably doesn’t mean anything at all, but his curiosity starts eating at him from the moment he notices it, only fueled whenever he sees more connected strings around him.

Slowly, it occurs to him that almost every linked pair he’s seen has been between two people that seem… close. Not just close physically, although they are usually side by side when he notices, but close in the way they act around each other. Like his mother and father, who kiss each other good morning and goodnight and always smile when they see one another, or like the pairs sitting across from each other in cafes, their hands clasped together below the table, or even the two students in his class who are always casting sidelong glances at each other and pretending that they don’t notice.

_ Maybe it means that they’re really special to each other, _ he thinks, rubbing his pinky absentmindedly. It’s not entirely impossible. After all, he can only recall a few pairs whose strings are connected that  _ aren’t _ close. It must be  _ something _ like that, right?

He resolves to keep his eye out for other similarities--maybe he’ll be able to figure the strings out once and for all if he pays attention to the patterns.

Maybe then he’ll find out why he doesn’t have a string, himself.

* * *

There’s a new face at the Iwatobi Swim Club.

Haruka doesn’t notice at first, too focused on his strokes to pay close attention to his surroundings. He glides through the water, doing his best to ignore the red strings criss-crossing the bottom of the pool in favor of pushing off the far side and heading back towards the starting block. He closes his eyes, enjoying the cool, wet feeling against his skin and the muted sounds of the swim club coming from above the water. His hand brushes the edge of the pool before he knows it, and he reaches out to stop himself before sticking his head up above the surface.

Makoto looks down at him with a smile, a hand outstretched. The thread around his pinky trails behind him, out the door to the changing rooms and out of eyesight. “Nice job, Haru-chan,” he says cheerily as Haruka accepts the offered hand, hoisting himself out of the water.

As he’s shaking droplets from his arms and emptying the bit of water that’s collected in his goggles, he notices an unfamiliar head of dark red hair in the lane next to his, surfacing seconds later to face the left wall. Haruka’s never seen the boy before--not that he pays close attention to the other members of the swim club. Even so, he’s sure that the boy is new and that this is his  first day. He wonders if he’s just here as a one-time thing, or if the club will be getting a permanent new member.

The redhead turns around in the water, making eye contact with Haruka for the first time. His irises are a bright wine color that contrasts with his pal skin and matches his hair, which stops just short of his shoulders. It’s kind of pretty, even though it’s soaked through, droplets clinging to the strands falling in front of his face.

The new boy smiles, flashing a set of tiny fangs as he lifts his hand above the surface to lean against the dividers, and all of a sudden Haruka doesn’t have time to wonder why his teeth are so sharp. He’s transfixed on the circle of red on the boy’s pinky finger, floating in the water for about a meter before…

Before disappearing into thin air.

He tries not to, but he can’t help but stare in utter shock, wondering what exactly a thread like that could mean. He’s never seen anyone’s string disappear so suddenly, not  _ once _ since he started seeing them when he was a child. Briefly, he wonders if the rest of the string is hidden underwater, but when he focuses hard enough he can see the end fading out instead of sinking down to the bottom of the pool.

“You’re as fast as the rumors said,” the redhead says, impressed. Haruka blinks back, too floored to do much else.

“He’s the fastest!” Makoto chimes in, smiling widely. “Haru-chan’s a natural.”

“The fastest, huh?” the redhead echoes with a light laugh. “Then let’s race! I want to see how good you are for myself.”

Haruka shakes his head almost immediately. He doesn’t want to race--he wants to know why the boy’s string just up and  _ vanishes _ like that.

“Haru-chan doesn’t like racing,” Nagisa explains, popping up next to Makoto. “He doesn’t even care about times. But he’d beat you for sure!”

“If that’s the case,” the redhead says with a grin, reaching up to pull himself out of the water, “then what do you think about entering a relay with me at the next tournament?”

Haruka blinks, shaking himself out of his daze once more. “I only swim freestyle,” he says immediately, as if on default.

“We’ll see about that,” the redhead says with a know-it-all smile, turning his back to the three of them and walking away. Haruka can’t help but track the end of his string as it moves, stretching slightly before shrinking back again. He watches as the boy pads over to Sasabe, barely managing to tear his gaze away as Makoto begins to talk.

“He seems nice,” he says with a glance towards the new boy. “And he’s fast. Maybe you  _ should _ race him.”

“Yeah, Haru-chan!” Nagisa cheers, nodding enthusiastically. “I bet you’d win for sure!”

Haruka glances over to the boy, who’s talking animatedly with a couple of older students from the club. “No, thanks,” he says with a shake of his head, trying to push the boy out of his head all together. The last thing he needs is to get wrapped up in the life of a boy with half a string--he’s confused enough without that particular mystery added to the list.

The rest of the day goes by quickly, so much so that Haruka’s surprised when the clock shows that it’s time to leave. He follows Makoto and Nagisa to the changing rooms, toweling stray droplets of chlorine water off of his skin and hair and changing back into his regular clothes. (For the most part. He’s learned that keeping his jammers on under his clothes makes getting to the pool much faster.)

He wanders out to the lobby, casting a glance around to find his mother, but his eyes fall on a now familiar head of red hair instead. The new boy is talking to Sasabe again, a towel slung around his neck, dressed in everyday clothes this time.

“Ah! Nanase! Over here,” Sasabe calls, catching his eye and waving him over. “I almost forgot to introduce you. This is Matsuoka Rin. He’ll be joining the club starting today.”

Haruka approaches the two of them with caution, his eyes once again catching on the faded string before darting up to look the new boy--Matsuoka--in the eyes.

“Nice to officially meet you, Nanase!” Matsuoka says with another grin, tilting his head to the side. His string pulls taut as he moves his hands to his hips, catching Haruka’s attention. Now that he’s closer, he’s able to get a better look at the end of the thread. It’s not frayed at all, and it doesn’t seem cleanly cut, either. It truly does fade out into nothing, like the stroke of a paintbrush that’s run out of ink.

He only realizes he’s been staring when Matsuoka ducks his head to make eye contact, confusion written across his face. “What is it?” he asks, looking up at Haruka with wide eyes.

“…Nothing,” Haruka answers, turning his head and looking away.  _ It’s just that I’ve never seen anything like you before, _ he adds mentally, knowing he’ll never be able to say it aloud.

Matsuoka only laughs at his response, a loud yet annoyingly pretty sound. “You’re weird,” he decides airily, grinning again as Haruka turns back to him. “I bet we’ll be good friends.”

“Maybe,” Haruka says curtly, although he severely doubts it. He has enough friends as it is--at least in his opinion--and besides, Matsuoka doesn’t exactly seem like his type. He’s attention grabbing, with his bright hair and bright clothes and bright smile, whereas Haruka prefers to blend into the background. Matsuoka can make friends somewhere else, with someone who won’t spend all their time staring at his hand.

“Haru-chan!” Makoto calls from the front door, where he’s waiting with Tachibana-san. “Are you ready to go?”

“Yeah,” Haruka says, turning away from the strange boy with the strange string and doing his best to put it out of his mind.  _ It probably doesn’t mean anything _ , he thinks, although he’s not sure if he’s even convinced himself.  _ And even if it does, it doesn’t concern me at all. I should just keep my distance and maybe things will go back to normal. _

He  _ hopes  _ things will go back to normal. But nothing’s ever as simple as that.

* * *

“Why do you keep staring at me like that?” Matsuoka asks a couple of weeks later, popping into Haruka’s field of vision. Haruka can’t help but take a step back as he leans in, an inquisitive look on his face.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he says, turning his head away. Truth be told, he knows exactly what Matsuoka is talking about. Ever since he joined the swim club, then appeared at Iwatobi Elementary a day later, he hasn’t been able to keep his eyes to himself. As much as he tries to ignore it, Matsuoka’s string and the mystery surrounding it have him glancing over every few seconds, checking to see if it’s still there. So it makes sense that he’s been caught red-handed after getting lost studying the faded end of the string.

Matsuoka leans over even further, popping up in front of Haruka again. “You’re always looking at my hand,” he elaborates, waving his hand in the air for emphasis.

“No I’m not,” Haruka retorts, purposefully keeping his eyes away from Rin’s finger.

“Yes, you are. What, do I have a weird birthmark there or something?”

“No,” Haruka says, turning away yet again.

“Come on,” Matsuoka whines, annoyingly childish. “Just tell me what you’re staring at and I’ll leave you alone, I promise!”

“I doubt that,” Haruka deadpans, crossing his arms. Where is Makoto when he needs him? Or Nagisa? Surely  _ someone _ is available to come drag him out of the conversation.

“Fine, be that way,” Matsuoka says, copying Haruka’s actions. “But don’t think I haven’t noticed, okay?”

That part does make Haruka feel a little bad. He hadn’t meant to weird his classmate out with his staring. He hadn’t even meant to stare in the first place. It’s just  _ so strange _ to see a string that stands out amongst the hundreds he sees every day, especially after all these years of learning to tune them out.

He resolves to keep his eyes to himself from then on, and hopes that Matsuoka will have the decency to drop the matter altogether. It works for a week or so, and he’s just starting to let himself relax, when Nagisa suddenly decides to befriend Matsuoka. All of a sudden “Rin-chan” is everywhere--in the lane next to his at the swim club, in the chair beside Makoto in the classroom, squished between him and Nagisa at their lunch table. Makoto doesn’t seem to mind the new addition to their group, and since Haruka doesn’t have a way to explain the strings to his friends without sounding even stranger than usual, he can’t do more than ignore Matsuoka at every possible opportunity for interaction.

Matsuoka, on the other hand, has no qualms with paying attention to Haruka. It seems that the harder Haruka tries to avoid him, the more he pops up. It’s aggravating, especially since he can’t give a valid reason for not wanting Matsuoka around. (Not that he doesn’t try. He probably complains more about Matsuoka than he should, but he has good reason, okay?)

“Can I invite Rin-chan over later?” Nagisa asks one day on their way to the ISC. (Matsuoka hasn’t joined them on their daily commute yet, thankfully.) “You know, since we’re all already going to your house after practice. He says he’s good at English, and I want his help.”

“Don’t believe everything you hear,” Haruka deflects, staring down at the ground.

“Actually, he’s not wrong,” Makoto says, quite unhelpfully. “I’ve heard him say full sentences without any trouble.”

“See? Mako-chan agrees with me,” Nagisa says. “Please can we invite him?  _ Please? _ ”

“I don’t care,” Haruka says bluntly, even though he very much does care. Matsuoka looks one too-long-stare away from confronting him again, and that’s really not something he needs right now. Plus, he always feels strange and unfocused whenever Matsuoka is around, even when he’s not paying attention to the strings.

On the other hand, he  _ is _ having some trouble with English.

“Oh, thank you, Haru-chan!” Nagisa exclaims, throwing his arms around Haruka and almost knocking both of them to the ground. “It’ll be tons of fun, I promise!”

Which is how, a couple of hours later, Haruka finds himself sitting in the living room with Makoto, Nagisa, and Matsuoka, halfheartedly penciling in answers on his English homework. Rin keeps correcting his accent and his spelling and his vocabulary every chance he gets, and it’s starting to get on his nerves.

“That should be an A,” Matsuoka tells him, poking at a misspelled word on his paper with the tip of his pencil. “Otherwise you read it like ‘eh-du-kee-shun’.”

Haruka shoots him a silent glare as he rubs his eraser against the paper. “There,” he snaps, brushing rubber crumbs off of his paper and onto Matsuoka’s. “Education. Better?”

“Your pronunciation is off,” Matsuoka replies, unaffected. “I can barely understand your English.”

“We both speak Japanese,” Haruka grits out, his glare deepening. “You don’t  _ need _ to understand my English.”

“Maybe we should take a break,” Makoto suggests nervously, shutting his English book with a dull thud. “I think we’ve done enough studying for one day.”

“I’m hungry, Haru-chan!” Nagisa adds, oblivious to the tension in the room. “Can we eat something?”

“Sure,” Haruka replies curtly, standing abruptly enough to jostle the table and stalking towards the kitchen. Allowing Nagisa to invite Matsuoka had been a huge mistake. He’s more of a distraction than he is helpful in any way. Haruka’s almost positive he’d have gotten more done on his own, even with his own subpar English skills.

He’s reaching up to grab a plate for some orange slices when a flash of red catches his attention. He turns, narrowing his eyes as he sees Matsuoka standing in the entranceway to the kitchen.

“What’s your problem with me?” he asks, stepping inside and out of view of the others. Haruka takes a step back automatically and feels the counter brush against his arm. There’s no getting out of this one, at least not on his own.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, perhaps a bit too defensively. Matsuoka scoffs, rolling his cherry red eyes disbelievingly.

“You stare at me all the time, but whenever I point it out, you always deny it. And when I try to be nice, all you do is get annoyed with me and tell me to leave you alone!” Matsuoka crosses his arms, fixing Haruka with a stare. His red string trails out from under the arm of his shirt before vanishing into nothing.

“Maybe you’re just annoying,” Haruka shoots back, his hands balling into fists at the sight. “Not everyone finds you so charming.”

“That doesn’t explain the staring,” Matsuoka points out, narrowing his eyes. “What is it, Nanase? Got a crush on me or something?”

“That’s-!” Haruka starts,  _ ridiculous _ on the tip of his tongue, but something inside him makes him stop short of saying it. He feels his cheeks start to heat up at the accusation, and he resists the urge to scrub the uncomfortable feeling away with his hands. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, okay? Just leave it alone.”

“Not until you tell me what’s going on,” Matsuoka retorts with a glare, his voice raising in volume. “I know you’ve got some sort of problem with me, okay? I might not know what it is, but that doesn’t mean I’m immune to all your weird side glances and mean comments.”

“I  _ told _ you, I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Haruka hisses, glaring. Rin scoffs again, his eyebrows pulling into an even deeper glare.

“I don’t believe that for a second,” he says hotly. “Something’s going on between us, and I’m not letting you pretend that it’s nothing. My eyes _work_ , you know! I can see there’s something off between us, so why don’t you just _tell_ _me_ what it is so I can try to fix it!”

“It’s your string, okay?!” Haruka hisses, his temper flaring. “I’m not staring at you, I’m staring at your  _ string. _ ”

As soon as the words leave his mouth, he regrets them. He’d spent all this time trying to hide the strings’ existence from his friends, his family, and now he’s blurting it out to the first annoying redheaded new kid that waltzes into his life? How stupid of him.

He’s expecting confusion, a  _ what are you talking about _ at the very least, but for once Matsuoka seems shocked into silence. He’s probably trying to figure out what Haruka’s talking about so he can make a witty retort of some kind.

_ Let him wonder, _ Haruka thinks, his eyebrows pulling together into a glare of his own. He doesn’t care if Matsuoka thinks he’s weird for saying things he doesn’t understand. After all, it’s his word against Matsuoka’s, and he’s pretty sure his friends will take his side if it comes down to it.

“What did you say?” Matsuoka asks, his voice cutting through the tension in the room. He sounds different--not confused or agitated like Haruka had been expecting, but almost shocked, disbelieving.

“Nevermind,” he huffs, turning back towards the cupboard with the plates. He’s not about to explain himself to someone as demanding and obnoxious as Matsuoka, even if it was him that blurted it out just seconds earlier. But before he can turn away, Matsuoka’s hand catches his shoulder, spinning him back around until they’re face to face.

“What do you mean, my string?” he asks, eyes wide. Haruka looks away and pulls himself out of Matsuoka’s grip.

“I said nevermind,” he snaps, staring down at his shoes. A moment later, a hand comes into his field of vision, the palm facing upwards.

“This string?” Matsuoka asks, his voice wavering. Haruka’s heart stops in his chest as his eyes catch on the line of red tied around Matsuoka’s pinky, the tail of the string hovering uncertainty in the air.

“You can see them?” he demands, staring up at Matsuoka wide-eyed. Maybe  _ that’s _ why Matsuoka’s string is so strange--because he, like Haruka, was born without one. And if that’s true, he must have found a way to grow her string back. Maybe he can teach Haruka how to do it, too.

(Maybe then he won’t feel so alone in the world, one in seven-point-seven billion, drifting aimlessly in a sea of red.)

“I can’t,” Matsuoka says, sending Haruka’s hopes crashing to the ground before they’ve even had a chance to grow. “But my grandmother used to be able to.”

“Your grandmother?” Haruka repeats, caught off guard. “How do you know?”

“She used to tell me stories about them,” Matsuoka says, his voice softening as he looks down at his hand. “She’d tie red sewing string around my finger and say the other end was connected to my soulmate.”

_ Soulmates, _ Haruka thinks, the word echoing in his mind over and over again. So  _ that’s _ what the red strings are showing him. He’s suddenly glad that his parents’ strings are connected, and at the same time he feels bad for the parents at the swim club whose strings lead in two separate directions. Is it possible for them to be happy, even though they’re not with the people they’re supposed to be with?

And what about him? He doesn’t have a string, so does that mean he doesn’t have a soulmate, either? Is he the only one in the world without a soulmate, or are there others like him? He’s certainly never  _ seen _ another stringless person, not counting Matsuoka. What if he really  _ is _ the only one?

The sense of loneliness that had seemed so great before now doubles in size, weighing down on him like a stack of bricks. He’d never cared about love or romance or soulmates before, but now that he knows that they actually exist (and now that he knows his is broken somehow) it suddenly feels a lot more important.

“Nanase?” Matsuoka calls, breaking him out of his thoughts. “You can see the strings, right? Do you know who mine is connected to?”

Haruka’s head snaps up, his mouth opening and closing a wordlessly as he tries to decide what to say. Should he lie? He could tell Matsuoka that his soulmate lives far away, and that there’s no way to tell without spending too much time following the strings around. Or he could say that he  _ does _ know, but he isn’t allowed to tell.

But what’s the point of lying to him, if he’s just going to find out the truth eventually? After all, Matsuoka isn’t the type to drop something after it’s piqued his curiosity, and Haruka can’t lie to him forever.

“I don’t know,” he answers, looking Matsuoka in the eyes. “That’s why I’ve been staring at it. Yours is the only string I’ve ever seen that just… disappears.”

“Disappears?” Matsuoka repeats, confused. “You mean like, it goes out the door so you can’t see the end?”

“No,” Haruka says, shaking his head. “It’s only a meter long. It doesn’t even touch the floor.”

He forces himself to keep his eyes focused on Matsuoka, even as his face falls with disappointment. Clearly Matsuoka had been hoping for a different answer, one Haruka knows he can’t give. He can’t help but feel a little guilty at crushing Matsuoka’s hope, even though it’s not like he’s the one who tied the red string there in the first place.

“Do you know what that means?” Matsuoka asks, his eyebrows drawing together. “Is my soulmate--are they okay?”

“I don’t know,” Haruka says again, his throat tightening. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, that’s alright!” Matsuoka replies too quickly, scratching the back of his head. “It’s not your fault. I just thought… I don’t know.”

Haruka waits awkwardly, unsure of what to say. He wants to reassure Matsuoka, despite their less than friendly relationship, but he doesn’t know how. After all, it’s not like he can change the state of Matsuoka’s string.

“My grandmother was going blind when I met her,” Matsuoka explains, breaking the silence. “She couldn’t see at all by the time I was old enough to speak and listen, so I never got to ask her about my soulmate. But she always told me stories about the different couples she watched get together. She said the good ones were always connected by a red thread.”

“Could she see her thread?” Haruka asks, fingers tracing the empty space around his pinky. Rin shrugs in response.

“I don’t know,” he admits. “I never asked her.”

“Oh.”

“Can you… not see yours?” Matsuoka asks hesitantly, looking down at Haruka’s hands.

“No,” Haruka says, shaking his head. “I don’t think I have one.”

Now it’s Rin’s turn to wait awkwardly, searching for something to break the silence. “I guess we’re both a little different, huh,” he says at last with an empty little laugh.

“I’m sorry,” Haruka says again, for lack of anything better to add.

“It’s okay,” Matsuoka assures him, waving his apology off. “Just… Promise you’ll let me know if you ever find my soulmate, okay? I just want to know who they are.”

“I promise,” Haruka finds himself agreeing, against his better judgement. Matsuoka cracks a smile, and for once Haruka doesn’t find it obnoxious or fake. He actually has a nice smile, baby fangs and all. Haruka wonders why he’d found it so intolerable up until now.

“Haru-chan!” Nagisa calls from the other room, breaking the two of them out of the moment. “Are you coming back? I’m hungry!”

“I’ll be out in a minute,” Haruka calls back, then turns his attention on Matsuoka, who’s staring at his hand again.

“You can’t tell them about this, okay?” he hisses, lowering his voice. “Not a word to anyone.”

“I won’t say anything,” Matsuoka agrees sincerely. “You can count on it.”

“Good.” Haruka turns back to the kitchen cupboard and grabs a large plate from the top, then takes a couple of oranges from the bowl on the counter and grabs a knife to slice them with. “Go wait with the others. I’ll be right there.”

When he turns around, Matsuoka is already gone.

* * *

He becomes strangely close with… Rin.

Starting with the fact that they call each other by their first names, now. Rin had insisted a week after the incident in the kitchen, because apparently a secret like theirs is enough cause for them to be on a first-name basis. Rin starts eating lunch with him and Makoto and Nagisa almost every day, and he even joins them for school projects every now and then. They swim together at the Iwatobi Swim Club, and sometimes they walk part of the way home together, too. Haruka finds himself thinking of him as less of an annoyance and more of a comrade--maybe even a friend.

Rin keeps his promise and doesn’t mention the strings to anyone, even though Haruka catches him casting wistful looks at his hand from time to time. Haruka finds himself staring at the string around Rin’s finger less and less now that Rin knows about it, too. Something about having talked about it with someone else makes it seem… not exactly more scensical, but less uncertain. At least now he knows that the strings really do exist, even if he doesn’t know why his and Rin’s are so different from everyone else’s. (Well, Rin’s is different. His isn’t there at all.) It’s almost comforting to have someone else know about the strings, even if they don’t talk about them anymore.

Which is why it comes as such an unpleasant shock when Rin announces that he’s leaving.

“Australia?” Haruka repeats, frowning.

“What do you mean, Rin?” Makoto asks, eyes widening. “You’re going to a different country?”

Rin nods, his face stretched into a grin that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Sydney, to be exact. I’m going to a swimming school to get special training. And I’m gonna stay with a host family, too. They have a really cute dog!”

Haruka’s frown deepens, a pang of hurt stabbing his chest.  _ Just what are you trying to do? _ he thinks, looking down at the bricks in front of them.  _ I thought you were all about “for the team”. _

“I’m going to be an Olympic swimmer,” Rin continues, staring up at the cherry tree with a smile. “Just like my dad wanted to be.”

His words cause a lull in the conversation as everyone tries to think of something to say. It’s common knowledge that Rin’s father is a pretty off-limits topic, although no one knows exactly why. Still, to have him bring it up, especially in the context of his father’s old dream of becoming a gold medalist, is a pretty big deal.

“That’s amazing, Rin,” Makoto says at last, sounding genuinely impressed. “I’m really happy for you.”

“Thanks!” Rin chirps. “I’m excited to go. It’s not gonna be easy, but I’m totally up for it!”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Haruka asks, staring down at the ground. “What about the relay?”

“I’ll still swim in the relay,” Rin explains quickly. “I leave the day after the tournament, so it’ll be the last time the four of us swim together before I go.”

Haruka makes eye contact with Rin for a split second, then looks away with a frown. He doesn’t know why, but the thought of Rin leaving is… bothersome to him--especially after all the time they’d spent together, and with the secret they have. Why does he have to go to Australia for swim training? Can’t he get that here, in Iwatobi?

_ It’s not like he’s leaving tomorrow, _ he thinks to himself with a shake of his head.  _ We have until the day after the relay to spend time together. Maybe he’ll change his mind by then and decide to stay here, with us. _

The thought is irrational, but he can’t help but think it, feeding the sliver of hope in his heart.

“We’ll still be friends, right?” Makoto worries, looking up at Rin with wide eyes. “You won’t forget about us, will you?”

“Forget about you?,” Rin repeats, a more natural smile crossing his face. “How could I? I’ll be back every so often to visit, so we can see each other then. And I’ll send you lots of pictures. And postcards!”

The thought of seeing Rin during breaks when he comes back to visit his family eases the ache in Haruka’s heart, but only by a little. At most Rin will be back in town once or twice a year, and who knows how much time he’ll be able to spend with them while he’s here?

“Don’t worry,” Rin says, and even though he’s still speaking to Makoto, his eyes flicker over to Haruka as he talks. “Nothing is going to change between us.”

“Promise?” Haruka blurts out before he can stop himself, his heart squeezing in his chest. Rin turns to him fully, raising his hand and holding out his left pinky.

“Swear,” he says, a meaningful look on his face. His string bends and sways as Haruka reaches up to wrap his own finger around Rin’s, almost as if it is connected to something after all. Rin smiles, squeezing his pinky against Haruka’s once before pulling away, turning to walk to the other side of the sakura tree.

“Let’s swim together, Haru,” he says, his hands clasped behind his head. “If you swim with me…”

* * *

When Haruka launches off the starting block, time seems to stop for a moment.

He’s suspended above the water, half a second away from diving in, and his eyes catch on the red of Rin’s hair and the red string tied around his finger as he extends it up in the air; a signal for Haruka and Haruka alone.

The next thing he sees is the deep blue of the water and a shining light replacing the wall of the pool, one that always stays just beyond his reach no matter how fast he swims. And as his feet hit the wall and he rockets himself back towards Rin, he remembers the words he’d been told the day he’d agreed to the relay:

_ I’ll show you a sight you’ve never seen before. _

* * *

Life isn’t the same after Rin leaves.

It’s calmer, for sure. Without Rin’s exuberant personality, there’s less constant commotion. Nobody’s there to challenge Haruka to races, or to laugh obnoxiously loud for reasons beyond Haruka’s knowledge, or to get too close when leaning on his shoulder after a competition. Nagisa does his best to step up in his place, his personality evolving from childish and carefree to strong-willed and outspoken, but it’s just not the same. Haruka finds himself thinking that even if they hired the best actor in the world, nobody could ever replace Rin, or even come close.

The first few weeks after Rin leaves are the hardest. More often than not, Haruka finds himself waiting for a witty comeback that never comes, or turning to gauge Rin’s reaction to something that someone says and being met with empty space instead. It hurts more than he thought it would--he hadn’t realized how tangled up in each others’ lives they’d been until all of a sudden they aren’t anymore. He actually  _ misses _ Rin, despite his best efforts to tell himself that he doesn’t.

He’s not sure if he’s relieved or upset the first time he comes home from school and realizes he hasn’t thought about Rin all day. Maybe a little of both? He’s not sure. All he knows is that day after day, hour after hour, the hole in his life that had been so prominent the day Rin had said goodbye slowly starts to shrink. It doesn’t heal fully--he still thinks of Rin more than he should, more than Makoto and Nagisa do if their lack of mentioning him is anything to go by--but it gets easier to just  _ be _ without thinking of Rin. He’s starting to get used to the feeling of living without him, of missing him without  _ missing _ him.

And then Rin decides to visit, and the hole in Haruka’s life opens itself up again.

Makoto is the one who tells him. His mother has been talking to Matsuoka-san lately, about the old swim club and Rin’s sister Gou and the newborn twins, Ren and Ran. So when Tachibana-san finds out that Rin’s coming to visit, Makoto makes sure Haruka is the first to know.

“Isn’t that great, Haru-chan?” Makoto says brightly, a smile stretched across his face. “We’ll get to see him the first day that he’s back! And the day after that, too! Nagisa will be so excited, don’t you think?”

Haruka doesn’t respond, his mind too fixed on the thought of Rin, back in Iwatobi where he belongs, to think about much else.  _ How long will he be staying?  _ he wonders, counting the days until their next break from school.  _ When does he get here? _

“He’s coming in a week,” Makoto says, as if reading his mind. Haruka lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, his breath turning to mist in the cool winter air.

“I wonder what he’ll be like now,” Makoto continues, putting a new worm of worry into Haruka’s head. “I mean, being in a new place for this long can change a person.”

Haruka looks down at the ground, watching his feet take step after step as worry intrudes into his thoughts.  _ What if he has an accent now, or what if he’s cut his hair, or if his teeth are sharper or less sharp or not sharp at all? Will he still be the Rin we know? _

And then another thought hits him, a thousand times worse than any of his other fears.

_ What if he has a string now? _

He flinches, stopping in his tracks as panic washes over him. His hands ball into fists at his sides, his fingers feeling cold and empty all of a sudden. Is it possible that Rin’s string appeared over the months he’d been gone? Maybe the distance between him and his soulmate grew, or maybe it shrank--one way or the other, it could have stretched Rin’s meter of string into something that actually connects to someone.

He feels frozen on the spot, his heart heavy in his chest and growing heavier the more he thinks about it. Because he doesn’t  _ want _ Rin to have a string. He doesn’t  _ want _ Rin to have a soulmate. As selfish as it sounds, he realizes he’s always taken comfort in the fact that Rin’s string is different, just like he is. It was almost like they’d been the only two in the world without full strings for a reason, and now that could all be washed away.

Makoto turns as soon as he realizes Haruka isn’t next to him anymore, his face pulling down into a worried frown as he walks back to him. “Haru-chan?” he calls questioningly, stopping a meter away. “Are you alright?”

Haruka nods, forcing himself to put one foot in front of the other yet again and willing his heart to calm down. What does it matter if Rin has a string or not? If he does, he’ll certainly be happy to hear about it, right? He’ll be able to find his soulmate and live happily ever after, the end. And if he doesn’t have a string, then nothing will have changed at all. Either way, it shouldn’t be a big deal.

But it is. Right now, it’s the biggest deal in the world. And Haruka can’t for the life of him figure out why.

* * *

As promised, Rin comes back a week later.

Haruka and the others are waiting outside the swim club, like they’d agreed on over text. He never carries his phone on him--most of the time it’s not even charged fully--so it had been Makoto who’d set the meeting up. It’s cold out, the December air biting at their noses and ears and blowing their hair around their faces until it tangles against itself. Their strings aren’t affected by wind or weather, but Haruka can’t help but wince as he watches his friends’ threads drag against the cold, wet concrete.

Nagisa holds his hands up to his mouth and blows a breath of warm air, rubbing them together as if he’s trying to lock in the warmth. His cheeks are rosy against his pale skin, and his curly blonde hair is ruffled and mussed. Makoto smiles down at him, his cheeks and the tip of his nose the same pinkish shade.

“We’ll be inside soon enough,” he promises as Nagisa sticks his hands back inside his pockets. “Rin should be here any second.”

Haruka turns to scan the horizon line, searching for the familiar head of red hair he’s come to miss so much. He can’t help but feel a bit disappointed as he comes up empty. Rin said he would be here by now, and yet here they are, waiting out in the cold for him.

“Why couldn’t we meet at the cafe?” Nagisa whines, shifting back and forth to keep himself warm. “It’s not like he can’t find his way around anymore.”

“The swim club is closer,” Makoto tells him, reaching up with a mitten-covered hand to rub at his nose. “We’ll be able to see him sooner if we meet him here. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

The question is directed at Nagisa, but Haruka doesn’t miss the way Makoto’s eyes flick up to him as he speaks. Had he been that obvious about missing Rin, or is Makoto better at reading him than he’d thought?

“Ah, there he is!” Nagisa exclaims, waving his hands in the air with reckless abandon. “Rin-chan! Rin-chan, over here!”

“I think he sees us, Nagisa,” Makoto laughs nervously, doing his best to placate him. “We’re the only ones here.”

Haruka could care less about Nagisa’s antics. He’s much more interested in the line of red stretched in front of Rin, tapering off exactly where Haruka remembers it fading. He breathes a sigh of relief before he even realizes what he’s doing, his shoulders relaxing as he takes in the rest of Rin.

Australia has changed him, but not by much. His hair is a little longer, his shoulders broader and more muscular. He’s gotten a bit taller, too, if Haruka isn’t mistaken. But none of that matters--all that matters is that he’s here, and his string is the same as it was when he’d left.

Haruka’s almost surprised at the wave of relief that washes over him as Rin approaches, his string relaxing as he does so. Does it really matter so much that there’s another anomaly like him? He’d never cared about being the only stringless person in the world before, but once he’d met Rin, everything had changed. Is it selfish of him, to be happy when he should feel sad? It’s not like he  _ wants _ Rin to be alone forever, but for some reason, he doesn’t like the idea of Rin having a soulmate, either.

So what  _ does _ he want for Rin?

“Hey, guys!” Rin calls, jogging the last few steps towards their group. “It’s been a while!”

Nagisa practically tackles him to the ground with a running leap as soon as he’s within reach. “Rin-chaaan!” he cheers with a delighted laugh, face stretched into a wide grin. “We missed you!”

“It’s good to see you, Rin,” Makoto agrees with a smaller smile. “How’s Australia been?”

“It’s great!” Rin replies exuberantly, eyes lighting up. “I’m getting so much better at swimming over there. English, too! My teachers say I’m almost totally fluent now.”

“Did you miss us?” Nagisa asks, unwrapping himself from Rin and jumping up and down. “I bet Australia doesn’t have as great friends as Iwatobi does, right?”

Rin laughs, a sound Haruka finds that he’d missed much more than he’d realized. “Of course not,” he says fondly. “Nobody in Sydney could ever replace you guys.”

Haruka wants to say something-- _ welcome back _ , maybe, or  _ how was your flight? _ but the words get stuck in his throat. He’s feeling too much, too many things, to know what to say and in what order to say it. He bites his lip, wishing he’d given more thought on what to say once Rin actually got back, when the redhead turns his smile on him.

“Hey, Haru,” he says, his voice warm and bright and perfect. “Miss me?”

Haruka huffs a quiet laugh, his unsureness melting away. “Yeah,” he answers truthfully, mentally tacking on a  _ more than you know _ . He doesn’t want to seem too needy, especially since Rin’s clearly having a good time halfway across the world. (He doesn’t need Rin to know just how much he wants to break down and beg him to come back.)

“Should we go?” Makoto suggests, tilting his head in the direction of the cafe they’d agreed on. “It’s too cold to be standing around outside.”

“Sure,” Rin agrees, falling into step beside Haruka as Nagisa joins Makoto in the lead. Just as they’re falling into a comfortable silence, listening to Nagisa chatter about the goings on in Iwatobi since Rin had left, he leans over and whispers, “I missed you, too,” extending his pinky like an offering.

Haruka smiles a small, private smile, and wraps his finger around Rin’s.

* * *

Two days later, he runs into Rin again.

It’s on accident this time--he’s waiting for the train to pass on his way home when he catches sight of a familiar head of red hair on the other side of the crosswalk. Rin has a bag slung over his shoulder, and he’s bundled up in a big navy blue jacket. His hands are stuck inside the pockets, and he’s got a plaid scarf wrapped around his neck to keep the cold at bay.

The last train car passes by with a  _ fwoosh,  _ and Haruka’s just starting to debate whether it’s too soon to go over and say hello again when Rin looks over and catches his eye. He breaks out into a grin, his slightly sharper teeth as white as the snow that’s started to fall around them.

“Hey, Haru!” he calls, lifting a hand to wave. His string snakes out from under his mitten and drops to the ground, crimson against the white-covered pavement.

Haruka waves back, crossing the few feet between them until they’re only centimeters apart. As he gets closer, he’s once again reminded of the ever so slight height difference between them now, and in the tiny difference in the length of Rin’s hair. Rin is different than he was before, but the same. It’s strange.

He feels warmer, for some reason, even though the temperature is practically dropping by the minute.

“Are you busy?” Rin asks, shoving his hand back into his pocket.

“No,” Haruka replies truthfully. “How come?”

“You said you and Makoto joined your middle school’s swim team, right?” Rin continues, ignoring his question.

“Yeah,” Haruka confirms. “The school has a pretty big pool. But why…?”

“Well,” Rin starts, laughing nervously. “I know you don’t care about your times or how you place at events or anything, but… I wanted to race.”

“Race?” Haruka repeats, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah!” Rin says quickly. “I’ve been working pretty hard over in Australia. I want to see how much it’s paid off, you know?”

“Where would we do it?”

“The old swim club, I think.” Rin brings a hand up to wipe at his nose, glancing in the direction of the ISC. “It should still be open for a little while, right?”

“Yeah,” Haruka agrees, nodding. He knows Coach Sasabe usually starts talking about closing it up for the season this time of year, but he’s pretty sure that it won’t close its doors officially for a little while yet.

“So?” Rin prompts, a wide, bright smile crossing his face. “Will you race me?”

Despite his apathy towards times and competing and being the fastest, Haruka finds himself nodding. He doesn’t care about the same things Rin cares about, but it would be amazing to be able to swim with him again, no matter if it’s a race or a relay or just for fun. He wants to see the light he’d seen before, during the tournament, if Rin will show it to him. He wants to feel as free as he had the day of their last relay.

They head over to the swim club, hands shoved in pockets to keep them out of the cold. Rin does most of the talking, mainly about his training in Australia and all of the people he’s met over the past few months. It’s really nice to hear his voice again, even though Haruka doesn’t process two thirds of what he’s saying. He gets lost in Rin’s words, the sound of the wind whooshing by them a soft accompaniment, and before he knows it, they’ve reached the swim club.

Coach Sasabe is standing outside when they arrive, staring up at the building wistfully. His expression is almost worried, with an edge of melancholy to it. Haruka wonders briefly if there’s something wrong, but Rin bounces forward before he can ask.

“Coach!” he calls with a wave. “I’m back!”

Sasabe turns, his eyes widening as he catches sight of the two of them. “Matsuoka!” he laughs, a grin spreading across his face and overtaking the strange, sad emotions that had been there seconds before. “How’ve you been, kid? How’s Australia?”

Haruka watches as Rin repeats all of his stories, glowing like a little kid talking about their favorite toy. He feels that strange warmth again, this time coming more from inside him than from Rin’s proximity. It’s  _ wonderful _ to have Rin back. It’s wonderful to listen to his voice, to see him bouncing around Iwatobi just like old times, to be next to him and just exist together again.

He  _ loves _ it.

“We want to race!” Rin explains, gesturing towards Haruka. “I’ve gotten a lot better over the past few months, so we wanted to see who’s faster now!”

Haruka doesn’t bother pointing out that he doesn’t care about who’s faster. All he cares about is swimming with Rin again, and getting back that feeling he’d first felt at the relay.

“Well, I was about to close up, but I think I have time for one more race,” Sasabe agrees with a laugh. “Come on in, boys.”

For once, they don’t have their swimsuits with them--Rin had left his at home, and Haruka hadn’t thought he’d be swimming today--so they borrow a couple of pairs from the swim club. Haruka doesn’t like the fit as much as his own jammers, but it doesn’t matter.

He changes quickly, grabbing a pair of goggles from the few spares they have available and heading out to the pool area. Rin is already waiting for him when he emerges, sitting down on the floor with his legs extended out in front of him. He never used to do too much warming up before swimming, but Haruka figures his coach in Australia must have broken that habit pretty quickly.

“Haru!” Rin calls, catching sight of him standing in the entranceway. “Come on, slowpoke!”

“I’m coming,” Haruka says with a pretend sigh, padding over to the pool carefully. He doesn’t bother with any fancy stretches, despite Makoto’s constant nagging about needing to prepare before getting into the pool. If he hasn’t hurt himself by now, he figures it can’t be too bad for him to skip warm ups.

“Ready to lose?” Rin teases, his mouth stretched into a playful grin. “Don’t expect me to go easy on you just because you don’t have the training I have, okay?”

“Sure,” Haruka replies easily. “Don’t expect me to let you win, either.”

“Ha! In your dreams.”

Haruka smiles, turning towards the starting block at the end of lane one. Sasabe emerges from the office area with a stopwatch, making his way over to the two of them.

“Whenever you’re ready,” he tells them, holding his hand out and giving them a thumbs up. “Just say the word!”

“We’re ready,” Rin replies, standing and turning to the lane next to Haruka’s. Together, they climb up onto the starting blocks, waiting for the signal. Haruka glances over at Rin--they make eye contact, and Rin smiles confidently, unwaveringly, like nothing in the world could possibly keep him down. And Haruka believes him.

How could he not?

“Take your marks!” Sasabe announces, his voice booming through the empty swim club. Haruka bends down, wrapping his fingers along the underside of the diving block and casting one last glance at Rin before turning his head towards the water. The pool glistens beautifully in the afternoon light, like their own personal sea. He feels himself start to relax, even as Sasabe calls out a “Ready…” in warning.

“And…  _ Go! _ ”

Haruka launches himself off the diving block, closing his eyes as the cool water envelops him. He kicks as hard as he can, his arms outstretched in front of him as he glides through the water, as if he can part it with a touch of his fingers. He goes as far as he can underwater, making it a good few meters until his lungs start to protest--with fluid motions, he propels himself towards the surface, feeling air on his back and the top of his head. He brings one arm up swiftly before plunging it back into the water, his hands cupped like he’d been taught. As his head breaches the water, he catches sight of Rin in the lane next to his, pulling in a breath of air before turning back into the pool.

_ He’s gotten faster, _ Haruka thinks as they begin to approach the wall.  _ That extra training in Australia paid off pretty well.  _ It doesn’t stop him from wishing that Rin would come back for good, but it hurts less now that he knows Rin is doing well.

His turn is near perfect as he rounds off in the water, pushing himself off the wall and and closing his eyes tightly on reflex. When he opens them, his vision is filled with a bright flash of light, a glowing  _ something _ just out of his reach. It shines so brightly, so beautifully, like a rainbow after a thunderstorm. No, like a hundred rainbows--a  _ thousand _ . He feels strange--the same way he’d felt when Rin had smiled at him, when he said he’d missed him, when he’d held up his left pinky like a signal only Haruka could understand. It’s not a bad feeling; it’s actually nice. He does his best to hold onto it for as long as possible, a small smile crossing his face.

He catches sight of flashes of red in the lane next to his, falling further behind him as he gets closer and closer to the light. A line of red on Rin’s hand as they raise their heads at the same time, the red of his eyes widening behind his goggles as Haruka pulls ahead, both of them bright and strong and unique to him and him only. It’s the last thing he sees before his hand slams against the wall of the pool, thrusting his head above the surface and pulling in a gasp of air. His lungs ache, and his muscles feel tired and strained, but he doesn’t register the sensation at all. He’s too focused on basking in the feeling of the water, listening to Rin’s shallow breaths beside him, the light in the pool shining on the insides of his eyelids until it burns itself into his mind.

“So?” Rin prompts, snapping him out of his thoughts. “Who won?”

Haruka opens his eyes as Sasabe walks over to them, stopwatch in hand. He looks between the two of them with a smile on his face, his eyes going from Haruka to Rin and back again. He seems to be dragging the moment out for dramatic effect--Haruka wouldn’t put it past him.

“Nanase,” Sasabe says at last, his eyes falling on Haruka and staying there. “Nanase won.”

Haruka doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about winning or losing (not that he ever has) but now he especially doesn’t care. He’s happy, sure, but it’s not from winning their race. It’s from Rin, and only Rin; nothing else matters.

He pulls himself out of the pool at the same time as Rin, reaching up to remove his goggles and shaking stray droplets of water from his hair. A small smile makes its way onto his face as he turns to face Rin, to thank him for showing him the sight again, maybe even to tell him that nothing in the world compares to swimming side by side with him. (He probably shouldn’t say the last part, but he’s on a high right now, and his impulsivity is at its highest.)

He doesn’t get to say it. He doesn’t get to say anything at all, because as soon as he looks at Rin, he freezes.

Rin is crying.

Fat tears roll down his cheeks, collecting at the sharp point of his chin and dripping onto the ground, where they merge with the chlorine water from the pool. His shoulders are shaking, and even though he’s clearly trying his best to control it, soft sobs and hiccups are escaping past his lips every few seconds.

The smile slips off Haruka’s face.

“Rin?” he questions, eyes wide. Because sure, Rin is pretty well known to be a crier, even at the smallest of things, but he hadn’t been expecting him to tear up over one lost race. Over the course of their time together at the Iwatobi Swim Club Haruka had watched him lose race after race, and only come back stronger because of it. So why now? Why isn’t he smiling and laughing like he had been before? Why isn’t he throwing an arm around Haruka’s shoulders and challenging him to another race the next day?

Why is he so  _ sad _ ?

“Hey, don’t be glum!” Sasabe exclaims, brandishing the stopwatch. “If memory serves, you beat your time by a great deal, Matsuoka-kun! That’s a good thing!”

Rin stands abruptly, taking a shaky step towards Haruka. He reaches out, although he’s not sure what he’s reaching for, but before he can utter another word, Rin is walking past him, dropping his goggles on the floor and retreating to the changing rooms. Haruka freezes, his eyes widening as the clatter of plastic on tile fills the suddenly very empty room.

“Jeez,” Sasabe sighs, shaking his head. “I thought he’d be happy. He’s improved so much over the past few months.”

_ He has, _ Haruka thinks, staring down at the goggles lying on the floor. He bends down to pick them up, rubbing a finger over the plastic gently.  _ What’s going on with him? Did something happen? _

_ Was it my fault? _

“You’d better go get changed, too,” Sasabe tells him gently. “I’ve got to close up soon, and I wouldn’t want to keep you two.”

Haruka nods, clutching the goggles in his hand and turning back towards the changing rooms. He has to find out why Rin is crying--he has to know if it was because of  _ him _ . But by the time he steps inside, Rin has disappeared. His bag isn’t where he’d left it, either, which leads Haruka to believe that he’s already gone. His heart sinks at the thought, and he goes about changing quickly, not wanting to take his time when he has to go and comfort his friend.

He grabs his own bag off of the floor and hurries to the lobby, making it just in time to see Rin turn away from the framed photos hanging on the wall. As soon as Haruka catches his eye, he turns and begins to run, but Haruka reaches out and catches his arm before he can escape.

“Wait, Rin!” he calls desperately, eyes wide and concerned. “What’s wrong?”

“Let me go,” Rin says weakly, making no attempt to snatch his arm away. His string floats in the space between them, limp and lifeless.

“You’re acting differently,” Haruka says, eyebrows slanting upwards sadly. “Did the race really mean that much? We can go again, if you want.”

“No!” Rin snaps, and this time he  _ does _ pull his hand away. Haruka blinks at him in shock as he turns to face him, mouth a thin, unhappy line. “What difference would it make, anyway?”

“What are you talking about?” Haruka asks, although it’s really more of a plea. “Why are you sad? What happened?”

“I  _ lost _ !” Rin cries, and to Haruka’s horror, tears begin to bead in his eyes once again. His shoulders slump defeatedly as he lowers his gaze to the ground, letting his hair fall in front of his face.

“I worked  _ so hard _ in Australia,” he continues with a sniffle. “I trained  _ every day _ ! I ran to school and back, I spent all of my free time swimming, I had the best coaches I could have asked for… And it  _ still wasn’t enough! _ ”

At that, his hands ball into fists, the muscles beneath his skin going taut and tense. Haruka stares, confused and upset, and at last finds the courage to ask, “Enough…?”

“Enough to beat you,” Rin finishes brokenly, a new wave of tears coming. They patter onto the floor softly, and with each one that falls, Haruka feels his heart break a little more.

“You were always the prodigy of the swim club,” he says, each word like a knife in Haruka’s heart. “You were a natural. The best of the best. I thought if I went to Australia and worked as hard as I could, I would finally surpass you… But I’m still not good enough.”

They stand there in silence, the harsh words echoing around the lobby, bouncing off walls and picture frames before dissipating into thin air.

“I quit,” Rin says, shaking his head and refusing to meet Haruka’s gaze. “I’m done swimming.”

What’s left of Haruka’s heart shatters into a million little pieces, piercing his lungs and his throat until he forgets how to breathe.  _ He can’t… He wouldn’t… Oh, Rin…! _

Suddenly, anger flares up inside him, and he takes a step forward and raises a fist angrily. “You can’t say that,” he says, eyebrows pulling down into a glare. “You don’t  _ mean _ it! Take it back!”

“I won’t,” Rin says stubbornly, eyes shining. “Just leave me alone.”

“You- You-” Haruka stutters, unable to find the right words. Instead of speaking, he grabs a fistful of Rin’s shirt and pulls him closer, until they’re only a couple of centimeters apart. They stay there for a few seconds, their breath intermingling, until at last Haruka finds the courage to press his forehead against Rin’s. His skin is warm, and he smells like chlorine and salt and sakura shampoo, and Haruka finds himself leaning closer, until their lips are only a centimeter apart, and-

Rin pushes him away, a sob ripping through the air between them as he stumbles backwards. “I told you to  _ leave me alone!!! _ ” he cries, turning and sprinting away as fast as he can. Haruka stares after him, wide-eyed, unable to do anything as he runs further and further away, until he’s only a speck in the distance. His vision grows blurry as Rin disappears from sight altogether, a single tear creating a wet trail down his cheek before splashing onto the ground.

He’s not sure what just happened, but whatever it was, it leaves a hollow, aching hole in his chest and a bad taste in his mouth. He’s fairly certain that Rin isn’t coming back. Something has changed between them; irrevocably so.

And it hurts, it hurts, it hurts.

* * *

Haruka spends his days quietly wondering where he went wrong.

He spends his nights fighting back tears of frustration, hands clenched in his blankets as he remembers the way Rin’s string had stretched back towards him as he’d run away.

He can’t bring himself to swim anymore.

* * *

“You want to dig the trophy up?”

Nagisa nods excitedly, grinning and practically bouncing in place.  _ He sure hasn’t changed, _ Haruka thinks fondly, watching as he spins in circles on the roof. After all this time, years after the Iwatobi Swim Club shut down for good, they’d somehow ended up at the same high school and fallen right back into step with each other. It’s nice, but it brings a sense of melancholy with it as well--a longing for something he can’t have, something that isn’t his anymore. (Something that never  _ was _ his in the first place.)

“I suppose we could go after school,” Makoto agrees uncertainly, scratching his chin. “What do you say, Haru? Want to go visit the old swim club one more time?”

“Do what you want,” Haruka says with a shake of his head. He doesn’t want to go back to the ISC. It brings back too many memories--both bad and good.

“Aw, come on!” Nagisa whines, childish as ever. “Please, Haru-chan?  _ Pleeeease? _ ”

“There’ll be a pool,” Makoto sing-songs knowingly. “A pool is much bigger than a bathtub, you know.”

And Haruka  _ knows _ he’s being manipulated, he  _ knows _ it. But that doesn’t mean it’s any less effective.

Which is how he finds himself standing in front of the old, abandoned Iwatobi Swim Club with Makoto and Nagisa, armed with a shovel and a flashlight respectively. The paint on the building is peeling and running, giving the whole place an eerily empty vibe. It’s strange to think of it as the same place they’d gone to as kids now that it looks so different.

“So, they’re really tearing it down,” Makoto says with a sigh, staring up at the building in all its faded glory. “The place is pretty trashed, to be fair.”

“It looks awful,” Haruka agrees.

“I hear it’s haunted!” Nagisa chirps, turning to face them. “People have been reporting seeing strange shadows all around the building, and hearing creepy noises, too.”

“Noises?” Makoto repeats, sounding less sure of himself than before. “A-are we sure this is a good idea?”

“It was  _ your _ idea,” Haruka retorts curtly, giving him a flat look. “If you don’t want to go through with it anymore, we can always leave.”

“No way!” Nagisa protests, jumping towards the building merrily. “We’ve gotta check it out before they close it down for good.”

With that, he heads towards the entrance, flashlight shining a beam of light on the ground in front of him. Makoto follows quickly, looking side to side as if something might jump out of the shadows and attack him at any moment. Haruka almost swears he sees his string shaking from fear, but he knows better than to think that.

With a sigh, he heads in after them, wondering how he’d gotten himself roped into this.

“This place brings back memories!” Nagisa chirps, spinning around in a slow circle in the middle of the empty lobby. “Like that time Haru-chan wouldn’t leave the pool, and Mako-chan had to bribe him out with mackerel. And that time I wanted to race, but Haru-chan wouldn’t take it seriously. And that time-”

“We remember, Nagisa,” Makoto says from his place behind Haruka. His hand is clenched in Haruka’s shirt nervously, and his voice shakes as he speaks. “Let’s just get the trophy and get out of here, okay?”

Nagisa ignores him, wandering further into the swim club. He stops in front of the wall of photos, his head moving up and down as he searches for their younger faces. “Ah, here we are!” he cries triumphantly, waving the others over. “Look!”

Haruka stares down at the photo, the image distorted from layers of dust settled on the glass of the photo frame. They look so happy together--Makoto and Nagisa are smiling at the camera, while he looks to the side, distracted by the arm slung around his shoulder. Their strings aren’t there--they don’t appear in photographs or videos--but he traces imaginary paths for them with his eyes, anyway.

“This is the picture from when we won the relay,” Nagisa says, as if Haruka and Makoto don’t remember. (But of course he does. He could never forget it--the last time the four of them had swum together, the feeling of the water on his skin as he’d raced towards the bright light just out of his reach. Nothing in the world could ever compare to that.)

They’d won a trophy that day--shiny silver-blue, with a gold diver on the top and a red and white ribbon tied around it. None of them had known what to do with it, so they’d ended up burying it in a time capsule outside of the swim club.

_ “We can dig it up later, once we’re all grown up,” Nagisa explains, carefully placing the lid on the cardboard shoebox. The trophy disappears from sight, replaced with shovelfuls of dirt as Makoto carefully fills in the hole they’d dug. _

_ “Romantic, right?” _

_ The words echo in Haruka’s head as he looks up to stare  _ him  _ in the eye, cool blue meeting sharp red. A soft laugh fills his head, a smile to match spreading across  _ his  _ face as his eyes close- _

“Haru, let’s go,” Makoto calls from a few feet away. Haruka snaps out of his thoughts, turning and following the others deeper inside the swim club.

“Do you think the marker will still be there?” Nagisa wonders, shining the flashlight around the empty halls.

“I don’t know,” Makoto replies, looking back and forth nervously. “Also, could we pick up the pace a little? I- huh?”

He stops in his tracks, accidentally tugging Haruka to a stop as well. He turns to look at Makoto questioningly, but his eyes are drawn to a slowly-approaching shadow before he can. If he’s not mistaken, it looks like another person, coming closer and closer to them with every step.

Nagisa has stopped, too, turning to look in the same direction. Makoto lets out a fearful gasp, drawing back and grabbing at his jacket as the shadow moves closer.

Haruka squints at the figure in the distance, wondering who could possibly be wandering around the old swim club aside from them. It’s hard to see without any light, and Nagisa still has their flashlight turned towards the other hallway, but before he can look away or ask him to illuminate the hallway, his eyes catch on the ever-bright red string attached to the stranger’s finger.

His heart stops.

“Yo,” the figure says, coming to a stop and reaching up with his right hand to adjust the baseball cap on his head. His wine-red hair spills out from under it in long, messy strands, tinged dark purple in the night light.

“Huh?” Nagisa looks up at him in confusion. “Who’s there?”

“I don’t know,” Makoto whispers, distressed.

Haruka doesn’t speak, even though he knows exactly who it is. Even though, after all this time apart, he’d be able to recognize that hair, that face, that  _ string _ anywhere in the world.

“I didn’t think I would run into you guys here,” Rin says, reaching back to snap the band of his hat against his head. Haruka barely manages to stop himself from flinching at the sound.  _ Steady, _ he tells himself, taking a deep breath.  _ It’s only Rin. _

_ Rin, who you haven’t seen in years. _

_ Rin, who lost the race. _

_ Rin, who you almost kissed. _

Nagisa and Makoto seem to have come to the same conclusion. (The  _ it’s Rin _ part, at least.) Nagisa acts first, springing forward and hanging onto Rin’s arm like he’s a teddy bear.

“You’re back from Australia!” he exclaims, breaking out into a grin.

“What are you doing here, Rin?” Makoto asks, his earlier trepidation gone.  _ They don’t know, _ Haruka thinks, his heart growing heavy.  _ They don’t understand. _

“This must be fate!” Nagisa chirps, turning back to the others. “Some type of unseen force must have brought us here together at the exact same time to-”

“Haru,” Rin interrupts, his voice harsh. Haruka shivers, clenching his jaw and bracing himself for whatever might be coming next.

“You still hang around with these guys?” Rin continues with a scoff. “You never learn.”

“And what about you?” Haruka retorts, eyebrows drawing together. “Have you learned anything, Rin?”

“Haru?” Makoto asks, confusion coloring his voice.

“I’m glad you asked,” Rin laughs. The sound is harsh and cold compared to the laugh he’d been imagining earlier, like nails on a chalkboard. “Why don’t I show you? Let’s race, Haru.”

As he walks down the hallway towards the abandoned pool, his meter of string stretches behind him, almost as if it’s reaching towards Haruka. And, as if pulled by an invisible force, Haruka takes a step towards him, and then another, and another.

He follows Rin. He doesn’t have a choice.

* * *

“I’ll show you how different we are now,” Rin says, his tone somewhere between braggy and threatening. He pulls his shirt over his chest, throwing it to the side carelessly. Haruka copies his actions, adrenaline coursing through his veins. He’s going to swim with Rin again. After three years apart, after everything they’ve been through, he’s going to be able to swim with Rin again! The context doesn’t matter--all that matters is the two of them and the water.

“Sure,” he agrees, glad he’d had the foresight to wear his jammers under his uniform pants. “Go ahead.”

“Wait, hold on a second!” Makoto protests, waving his hands frantically. “You can’t-”

“Can it,” Rin snaps, his voice harsh and cold. He turns towards the starting block, taking a step forward and hoisting himself onto it. Haruka does the same, eyes tracking Rin’s every movement as he waits. “On your marks!”

They bend down, their fingers curling around the underside of the starting block, feet positioned so that they’re ready to spring at a moment’s notice. “Ready…” Rin calls, his voice a low rumble compared to back when they were kids. (A lot has changed since then, Haruka thinks.)

“And…  _ Go! _ ”

_ Wait- _

Haruka barely has time to stop himself from flinging himself off the starting block, almost losing his balance and falling backwards in his attempt to steady himself. Rin, luckily, has the same realization, and manages to keep himself from diving headfirst into an empty, drained, tiled tub of concrete before he gives himself a concussion.

“Ah, it’s empty,” Nagisa calls, rather unhelpfully, clicking the flashlight to life and illuminating the pool.

“I told you to stop!” Makoto sighs, rubbing a hand over his face. Haruka glances over at Rin, who makes an annoyed grunting sound and steps off the block, running a hand through his messy hair.

“Figures,” he says tiredly, like the whole thing hadn’t been his idea in the first place. “But that reminds me… did you guys come here for this?”

Haruka’s eyes widen as he holds up the trophy, gleaming silver-blue and gold in the soft light from the windows. He tosses it in the air carelessly, catching it at the base and shaking it so that the ribbon rubs against itself with a quiet rustling sound.

“Our trophy,” Nagisa says, although he sounds less excited and more confused now. “Why do you have it?”

“I don’t need this thing anymore,” Rin says, ignoring him completely and letting it fall to the ground. Haruka flinches as the cheap metal clinks against the tiled floor, the sound like a gunshot in the quiet of the room. “It’s all yours.”

Then he’s gone, disappearing into the darkness of the hallway without so much as a glance back at the others. His string fades into the darkness until Haruka can’t make it out at all, no matter how long he looks.

“He’s kinda… changed,” Nagisa says, sounding disappointed. “I wonder what happened in Australia…”

Haruka bites his tongue, turning to step away from the starting block. There’s a hollow ache in his chest, one that he hasn’t felt this strongly in a long time, and his throat feels strangely tight.  _ It shouldn’t matter, _ he tells himself, shaking his head.  _ Everything that happened… that was a long time ago. You should move past it already. _

But he can’t bring himself to forget the expression on Rin’s face the moment before they’d almost dived into the pool. Something about it had struck him as strangely familiar, even though he hasn’t seen him in over three years.

It almost seems like Rin feels the same way that he does.

* * *

Things are different now that Rin’s back.

Haruka finds himself looking over his shoulder more often than he should, wondering if ( _ hoping that _ ) he’ll bump into Rin somewhere in Iwatobi. They don’t go to the same school--Rin had chosen the swimming powerhouse Samezuka Academy upon his return, leaving the rest of them alone together at Iwatobi High School. And since Samezuka is a boarding school, they don’t run into Rin around town, either. He has no reason to go grocery shopping when they have their own cafeteria, and aside from his family, he doesn’t have anyone to visit, either.

Another thing he doesn’t do; confront Haruka about the almost-kiss. Despite Haruka thinking about it more often than he probably should after years of repressing the memory to the furthest extent possible, he doesn’t dare to bring it up with his friends, figuring they don’t need to know. And if the lack of gossip from Samezuka to Iwatobi is any indication, Rin hasn’t said anything about it, either.

Part of him is glad that that particular piece of information hasn’t spread, but most of him is too busy wondering  _ why _ to really be thankful. Is it because Rin doesn’t want other people to know about it, too caught up in his desire to win to bother revealing it to anyone else? Was he too disgusted and offended by it to ever reveal it to someone else? Or did it really not mean enough for him to acknowledge it at all? It’s not like they  _ actually _ kissed, Haruka reminds himself. Maybe Rin doesn’t even realize what he’d been trying to do.

(Not that he knows what he’d been trying to do, either. He’s tried to figure it out before, tried to think of what could have possibly compelled him to do what he’d done, but he always comes up empty.)

He closes his eyes and shakes the subject away. He really should be glad that the almost-kiss didn’t cause any more damage to their relationship. There’s already too much change in his life right now.

Although, not all of the change has to do with Rin; part of it is Nagisa’s fault, too. Namely, his idea to start the Iwatobi High School Swim Club. He manages to rope Makoto, Haruka, and Rin’s sister, Matsuoka Gou, into the club, the latter acting as their manager. He even poaches one of the track team’s members, Ryuugazaki Rei, although nobody can quite figure out why. Ryuugazaki can’t swim to save his life, so they’ll have to spend a fair amount of time teaching him the basic strokes before they can move on to real training.

Makoto hears through mysterious means that Rin has joined the Samezuka Swim Club, which for some reason gives Haruka incentive to do better. (Maybe it’s because he wants to prove to Rin that he’s worth swimming with, worth sticking around for.) Rin joining the swim club means they’ll see each other at swim meets, joint practices, and tournaments, but none of that guarantees the chance for them to swim together again. It hurts a little, especially the first time they join Samezuka’s practice and Rin walks out without so much as a backwards glance, his string trailing behind him as he goes.

But it’s not important. Rin is swimming again, and that’s enough.

* * *

They run into each other a couple of weeks later.

Nagisa had dragged the whole Iwatobi team out to go swimsuit shopping with Ryuugazaki, who’s hoping that a new suit will give him the psychological effects he’s missing and allow him to be able to swim. (Or something like that. Haruka had lost track of his theory three words in.) At first they’d all been focused on helping Ryuugazaki, but somewhere along the way they’d gotten sidetracked into trying on new and increasingly ridiculous swimsuits alongside him. Haruka mostly sticks to his beloved black-and-purple jammers, but he has to admit, it’s kind of fun to watch the others try on new styles.

He’s emerging from the changing room when the  _ fwoosh  _ of the curtain moving in the stall next to his catches his attention. He turns, eyes widening as he catches sight of Rin standing with his back towards him, dressed an unbought swimsuit that looks pretty similar to his old red-striped pair.

“Nitori,” Rin calls, looking around the waiting area impatiently. Haruka almost ducks back into the changing room to hide, but before he can, Rin’s eyes land on him.

“Haru?!” he exclaims, his eyebrows shooting up in surprise as they stare at each other, like Haruka is the last person he expects to see here.

“Rin…” Haruka echoes, just as surprised. Sure, he’d figured that they’d see each other again eventually, but he hadn’t been expecting to bump into him in a small swimsuit shop at the edge of Iwatobi, all the way across town from Samezuka.

They stare at each other in silence, tension thick in the air. Haruka feels cold all of a sudden, barely able to repress a shiver under Rin’s watchful gaze as he scrutinizes him. The silence is just shy of becoming unbearably long when Nagisa’s distant voice breaks it, coercing Ryuugazaki into yet another swimsuit.

Rin glances over his shoulder, then turns his attention back to Haruka. “I wanted to talk to you,” he says, tilting his head in the direction of the exits. “Come with me for a second.”

Haruka nods, wordlessly slipping back into his stall and changing into his street clothes. He follows Rin outside, because apparently he’s never  _ not _ going to follow Rin when he asks him to. His heart beats a little faster at the thought of speaking to Rin again, one on one. What does he want to talk about? The kiss? Their strings? Something entirely different? Whatever it is, it apparently isn’t important enough to call or text about. He hasn’t received a text from Rin in years, and he’s pretty sure Rin’s not about to change that now.

Rin’s mind seems to be in a similar place, because he starts the conversation with a, “Haru, what have you been doing the past three years?”

Haruka blinks, surprised. Why is Rin asking? He must be getting at something deeper--he doesn’t care about Haruka’s day-to-day life, no matter how close they might have been before he left.

“You’re a better swimmer than this,” Rin continues without a beat of hesitation. “So why aren’t you taking it seriously?”

“I’m not better than someone who just got back from Australia,” Haruka replies evenly, ignoring the way his heart sinks in his chest. So they’re just going to talk about swimming. He doesn’t know why, but a tiny part of him had been hoping for something more.

“Are you mocking me?” Rin bristles, the corners of his mouth pulling down.

“I’m not,” Haruka tells him flatly. “You won our race. Now you can move on.”

_ Move on and leave us all behind again, _ his mind adds unhelpfully.  _ Leave  _ me _ behind again. Isn’t that what you do best? _

“It wasn’t a real win,” Rin retorts, eyebrows drawing together. “It would be hard  _ not _ to beat you, given the shape you’re in. I want a  _ real _ race this time!”

Haruka sighs, looking back towards the swimwear store. “You’re a pain,” he says, turning to head back inside. “You know I only swim free. I won’t swim for you anymore.”

He moves to go back inside, but before he can, the sound of footsteps on pavement approach and a hand spins him back around, slamming him against the wire fence surrounding the store. He gasps quietly, the fence rattling as Rin holds him to it with an arm on either side of him, eyes intense and unblinking.

“No,” he growls, voice low. “You  _ are _ going to swim for me. I won’t accept no for an answer, Haru.”

Once again, they stare at each other in silence, the noise of the world reduced to a faint hum. They haven’t been this close since Haruka pulled Rin to him by his shirt, motivated by an unnamable force, something between them causing him to move closer. Rin’s eyes haven’t changed at all, Haruka notes. They’re still the same pretty wine-red color, still as shiny and bright as ever, only now they seem less enthusiastic, more driven by anger than by spirit.

_ He’d _ been the reason for that change. For all of Rin’s changes.

The least he can do is offer one final race.

“If I do,” he says slowly, reaching up and pulling Rin’s arm away from the fence. “Then you have to promise me something. If you lose, don’t say you’re going to quit. Don’t embarrass yourself by making empty promises. And don’t  _ cry _ , Rin.”

_ My heart couldn’t take it if you did. _

Rin seems disoriented for a second, but he composes himself in a flash. “You don’t have to tell me that,” he snaps, pulling his arm away. The movement is strangely familiar, and it gives Haruka a pang of sadness to see. “I’m not a little kid anymore. This time, I’ll make it clear how different you and I are.”

With that, he turns in the opposite direction of the store and starts to walk away. “Try to build some muscle before we meet again,” he calls over his shoulder as he goes. “We’ll settle things at the prefectural tournament.”

The last thing Haruka sees before he disappears around the corner is the once-familiar meter of red, trailing behind him like it so often seems to do. Then he’s gone, and Haruka is left alone, wondering once again what he’s gotten himself into.

* * *

Haruka’s days pass in a blur.

He helps the others teach Rei how to swim; surprisingly enough, it turns out the only stroke he can do is butterfly. Gou enters them in the tournament Rin was talking about as soon as they’re all comfortable in the water, signing Makoto up for the 100 meter backstroke, Nagisa up for the 100 meter breaststroke, Rei up for butterfly, and Haruka up for freestyle. She and Nagisa then promptly drags them all out to a makeshift training camp by the ocean, roping their homeroom teacher, Amakata Miho, and the coach-turned-pizza-boy Sasabe into the chaos, too.

One thing Haruka remembers with clarity; Amakata-san and Sasabe are linked together by the red strings. It’s strange to see a linked pair meet for the first time, strange and awkward, but he can’t do anything about it, so he resolves to keep his revelation to himself.

Still, it’s been so long since he’d really thought about the strings--after Rin had left, it had been too painful to think about their shared secret, so he’d gone back to ignoring everyone’s threads in the hopes that it would make his life easier--so the sudden appearance of a connection between two people he knows fairly well is a bit jarring.

He wonders if Rin still thinks about the strings. He’s not sure if Rin went around dating people in Australia, but as far as everyone else knows, he’s single as of now. Maybe he’s waiting until after he achieves his dream to focus on his love life, although that doesn’t sound like the romantic Rin that Haruka used to know.

Maybe he’s waiting to find someone else who can see the strings to ask them about his soulmate, since he and Haruka aren’t exactly on friendly terms anymore. The thought hurts, but the pain is eased by the fact that finding other string-seers isn’t exactly an easy feat. Unless Rin is willing to make a fool out of himself by posting an ad in the local paper or leaving his phone number on every telephone pole and bulletin board in Iwatobi, he’s gonna have a hard time finding someone else with Haruka’s “gift”.

As cruel and selfish as it may be, he takes comfort in that thought.

* * *

The day of the tournament finally arrives.

Gou has been keeping a countdown to the event by the pool for the last week, putting her calligraphy skills to use with each sign. Haruka has been trying to ignore it, focusing on getting back to the level he’d been at before he’d quit swimming way back in middle school. He doesn’t know why he bothers to heed Rin’s advice about building muscle, but he finds himself thinking about their conversation as he trains, using it as motivation to do better. And surprisingly, it works. By the time the tournament rolls around, he’s beaten his initial time by a fair amount.

They meet a few feet outside the venue on the first day of the event, since Nagisa had insisted on walking through the doors together for good luck. Haruka adjusts the strap on his bag as they approach, wondering how it had gotten so heavy in a matter of seconds.

“Haru-chan, Mako-chan, look!” Nagisa calls, reaching upwards to point at Rei’s face. “Rei-chan was so nervous, he didn’t get any sleep last night!”

“Not everyone has nerves of steel like you,” Rei grumbles, his cheeks flushing. “I have a right to be nervous. It’s my first time doing something like this, you know.”

“You’ll be fine, Rei,” Makoto assures him with a pat on the back, steering them all towards the doors. “Just focus on your stroke for now, okay?”

They sign in and meet up with Gou and Amakata-san in the seating area, dropping their bags in their seats. Gou had chosen a good place to scope out the competition--she points out the most widely-known swimmers and gives statistics on each one, citing her data journal (which is mostly just drawings of muscles). Haruka watches the swimmers warm up, doing fancy stretches and getting used to the huge, gleaming pool.

He looks around, wondering if Rin is at the event yet. He catches sight of a few Samezuka Swim Team jackets, the pop of red lining against the dark black material easily making Samezuka’s swimmers stand out from the crowd, but no matter how many times he goes over them, he can’t seem to spot that familiar head of wine red hair.

“I guess Rin isn’t here yet,” Makoto says, as if echoing his thoughts. “Don’t worry, Haru-chan. He’ll show up sooner or later.”

Haruka doesn’t respond, turning his attention to the brochure Gou had helpfully produced for them. He’s in the fourth heat for the 100 meter freestyle, meaning he’ll be going mid-morning. To his surprise, Rin is in the lane right next to his, meaning they’ll once again be swimming side by side.

He can’t decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

The first three freestyle heats pass quickly enough. Gou keeps a running commentary on the other schools and their swimmers, scribbling furiously in her journal as she does so. Makoto and Nagisa chime in occasionally, and even Rei makes the occasional remark when someone does particularly well or particularly poorly, but Haruka doesn’t bother to listen. He doesn’t care about the other swimmers or their times. He just wants to get in the water and swim.

Finally, the third heat ends. Haruka stands, nods a brief goodbye to the others, and goes to change into his swimsuit. He’d brought his best one, the pair of jammers he’d bought when he was out shopping with the team, as well as a new pair of goggles, because his old ones were getting loose and dull.

But before he can even make it to the changing rooms, he’s stopped by a familiar voice.

“Hey, Haru,” Rin says, standing up as if he’d been waiting for him. He’s wearing Samezuka’s jacket too, of course, along with his classic red-striped legskin. A pair of red-banded goggles hangs from his neck, opaque in the ultraviolet hallway light.

“Rin,” Haruka replies evenly, lifting his head. “I’m here, as promised.”

“Good,” Rin says, a confident, almost mocking smile stretching across his face. “I kept my entry time low so we’d be in the same heat. No point racing if it’s not against you.”

The words are supposed to sting, but Haruka finds himself oddly soothed by them, instead. So Rin still cares about swimming with him, after all.

“We’d still meet at the final,” he points out, keeping his expression carefully neutral. Rin barks a laugh, cruel and harsh, a mockery of his old laughter.

“I don’t want to wait that long,” he says, reaching up to rest his goggles against his forehead and snapping the band against his skull the way he always does. “Besides… There’s no guarantee you’ll even  _ make _ it to the finals.”

Haruka’s jaw tenses. He knows Rin is right--since they’re in the same heat, only one of them will be able to advance to the next level of the tournament--but he refuses to give Rin the satisfaction of shaking him. He stands his ground as Rin walks towards him, the same predatory smile still stuck on his face.

“This is between you and me,” he says as he moves, getting closer and closer until he’s inside of Haruka’s personal space. He leans in a little, and Haruka’s eyes widen as he feels Rin’s hair brush against his cheek, Rin’s breath on his skin.

“I look forward to it,” Rin murmurs, soft and promising and destructive. Then he dodges, taking a neat step to the side and continuing on his way, leaving Haruka’s head spinning.  _ Just what are you trying to do? _ he wonders as phantom breaths ghost across his skin.  _ Is this payback for what I did to you before? _

He stands there by himself for a minute, wide-eyed and staring at nothing, until he hears the announcer’s voice, muffled from the inside of the building. He shakes himself back to the present, grabbing his bag from where it had fallen off of his shoulder and turning towards the changing rooms. He  _ can’t _ think about that right now, can’t focus on yet another almost-kiss when he has a race to win.

He changes quickly, leaving his things in an empty locker and lining up with the other swimmers. Rin is already there, but he keeps his attention on the wall in front of him, completely icing Haruka out. Haruka attempts to do the same, focusing on the pep talk he’d half-listened to Makoto give them earlier in the morning, and soon enough a volunteer comes to guide them out to line up at the pool.

Haruka casts a sidelong glance at Rin, standing at the starting block next to him. As if on cue, Rin meets his gaze, his eyes sharp and daunting. His mouth is pressed into a thin line, and his eyebrows are pulled down, as if he’s unhappy.  _ No _ , Haruka thinks.  _ He doesn’t seem weak or vulnerable. He’s not upset--he’s determined. Focused. Serious. This is Rin at his very best. _

“Set,” the announcer calls over the tinny speakerphones. Haruka bends down to grab the underside of the starting block, turning his attention away from Rin. He can’t afford to think about him right now. He’s got a race to get over with, and then he’ll finally,  _ finally _ be free. (Free from what, he can’t say, but he’s desperately hoping that the Rin-shaped hole in his heart will disappear after the event.)

A high-pitched  _ beep _ fills the air, followed by a chorus of “Go!” from the announcer and the crowd. Haruka rockets himself off the block, arms stretched in front of him like the nose of a dolphin as he meets the surface of the pool and dives under. He opens his eyes, waiting for his natural rhythm to kick in, but he’s only met with darkness and the thundering of his own heart. It doesn’t feel right, it doesn’t feel  _ the same _ ; as if the water is resisting him rather than welcoming him. Instead of letting him glide through it seamlessly, it pulls at him, forcing him to lag back as the other swimmers (as  _ Rin _ ) speed ahead.

_ What’s happening? _ he wonders in a panic, kicking harder and pulling his arm above the water for his next stroke, desperate to keep up.  _ Why am I falling behind? And why do I care? _

His lungs ache traitorously as he pulls in his next breath, some pool water splashing into his mouth as he turns his head.  _ Messy, _ he thinks angrily, his eyebrows pulling down as he spits the chlorine water out.  _ Keep your head in the game! Stay focused! _

He’s just past halfway on the first leg when he passes Rin. No--when  _ Rin _ passes  _ him _ .

A flash of red is all he sees--it’s all he  _ has _ to see to know who it is. And it’s moving the opposite direction, already heading back towards their starting point.  _ How is he so far ahead? _ Haruka panics, eyes widening behind his goggles as he struggles to pick up the pace. His feet hit the wall and he uses all of his lower body strength to launch himself back the way he came, all of his attention focused on the flash of red in the lane next to his. He can just make out Rin’s string in the water, trailing behind him like it’s being dragged through the pool instead of floating aimlessly like it usually does.

He kicks harder, drives his hands into the water and forces himself through it, doing everything in his power to keep up, to stay on the same level. He’s almost there, almost caught up, so  _ close _ to Rin, as if he’s within touching distance. He could reach over and grab onto Rin’s hand, trace the circle of red around his finger, and hold on so that Rin could never pull away from him again.

But of course he doesn’t. He just swims, his muscles tiring, his lungs protesting, and his heart hammering in his chest. He can’t  _ think _ , he can’t  _ let himself _ think about that right now. He has a team to swim for, to  _ win _ for, and that’s all that matters. Rin  _ doesn’t matter _ .

He hears the faint calls of his team as they cheer him on, screaming his name at the tops of their lungs. He can make out each of their voices; Nagisa’s, Makoto’s, Rei’s, and Gou’s. It’s almost enough to distract him from Rin, almost enough to push him over the edge to victory.

His hand slams against the wall less than a second after Rin’s.

_ After _ Rin’s.

The scoreboard confirms what he already knows.

_ “YES!” _ Rin yells, his face split into a triumphant grin as he reaches up to pull his goggles from his head. His fists hit the water as he lets out a victorious laugh, causing droplets to splash in every direction. One lands dangerously close to Haruka’s eye, but he doesn’t bother wiping it away. Partly because he doesn’t want to look like he’s crying--crying has always been Rin’s way of dealing with loss, not his--but mostly because he can’t muster the strength to do much of anything at the moment. His shoulders shake with every breath he takes, moving up and down in time with his inhales and exhales. His leg muscles protest at the quick, short overexertion, but the feeling pales to the hollow, empty ache in his chest.

He didn’t qualify for regionals. He didn’t do well enough to make his team proud, no matter how much they might assure him otherwise.

He  _ lost _ .

“Haru!”

Haruka finds the strength to look up, wondering when and how Rin slipped out of the pool without him noticing. He stands above Haruka’s lane, hand on hip, grin still in place as he stares down at him.

“I win,” Rin says, his eyebrows drawing downwards as his mouth stretches wide. “Now I never have to swim with you again.”

Haruka can only stare, open mouthed, as Rin turns and walks away. His cruel words repeat in Haruka’s head over and over again, until he can’t hear anything else. The sound of the tournament fades away, replaced by the voice he’s missed so much over the past few years, only this time it’s twisted in a mockery of its usual self.

_ I never have to swim with you again. _ Does he mean it? Is one victory really all that he’d wanted? Just one win? Haruka had thought… He’d thought that there had been  _ more to it  _ than that. He’d thought that when they’d finally swim together again, for real this time, something between them would change for the better. But now it seems like they’re even further apart than they were before, and he doesn’t know how to fix it.

As he’s standing in the showers later, it occurs to him that he hadn’t seen the bright, shining light during the race. He closes his eyes tightly and wraps his pinkies together, pretending that it’s Rin’s finger instead of his own.

Pretending. Like that will fix anything.

* * *

Haruka submerges his head under the water and opens his eyes, raising his hand up to the sky. The moon outlines each of his fingers subtly, making them seem even thinner and longer in the moonlight. He frowns, closing his eyes again and lowering his arm, letting himself float to the surface.

The others had all lost their races, too. It had been a crushing disappointment for all of them, that not even one of their members had gotten to advance to regionals. There had been a sad, somber sort of feeling in the air when Haruka had left early, brushing off Makoto’s concern in favor of heading to the Iwatobi pool to cool off for a while. He’s been swimming ever since, letting his mind dwell on the tournament, and on Rin, and everything in between.

Something about that race was different, and he’s not a hundred percent sure why. He’d wanted to win, even though he  _ never _ wants to win. He only cares about swimming free. Isn’t that what he’d done? Wasn’t he free the moment he’d touched the water? Why is he so disappointed that he’d come in second?

And Rin… He’d been so  _ happy _ . Happy to finally be rid of Haruka and everything they’d gone through. Happy to cut all ties between them. Happy to win, to win against Haruka, to advance to the next level. Of course he is. Why wouldn’t he be? He’s a talented swimmer who actually does the work, trains day in and day out to get to where he wants to be. Why shouldn’t he be happy about a victory?

Why shouldn’t he be free? Just because Haruka isn’t?

_ Of all the selfish things, _ Haruka thinks, turning his head into the water and diving back under.  _ He deserves to be free. He won the race. _

_ And I lost him. _

* * *

When he finally comes home, he’s met with an unexpected sight.

Makoto is leaning against the wall at the entrance of his home, fast asleep. His neck is crooked at an uncomfortable-looking angle, and in his hands, he holds Haruka’s old, unused phone. His string trails down the stairs and out into the night, disappearing around the corner a few meters down.

Haruka frowns, turning back to Makoto and bending down to slip the little rectangle out of his fingers, careful not to wake him. He presses the power button, noticing the  _ new voicemail _ icon in the corner of the screen. Confused, he presses play and holds the phone to his ear.

_ “Haru-chan, where are you?”  _ Nagisa’s voice calls, an edge of desperation to it.

_ “Please hurry home!” _ Rei adds.  _ “We’re all worried about you!” _

_ “I’m sorry, Haruka-senpai!” _ Gou wails.  _ “I signed everybody up for the medley relay without telling you!” _

_ “Please, Haru-chan!” _ Nagisa says again.  _ “Let’s swim together tomorrow, as a team!” _

_ “I’ll be fine, too,”  _ Rei adds.  _ “I’ll have all the theories memorized by tomorrow, I promise!” _

_ “Rei-chan, that’s a sure sign you’ll fail!” _

_ “I just have to memorize the theory on how not to fail, too!” _

The voicemail ends, his phone playing the generic, robotic-sounding  _ press one to delete _ message as it does. Haruka sighs, shutting it off with a click and shaking his head. He’d never agreed to a relay--they’d barely even talked about it, after Makoto had shut down the idea to protect him from his memories of Rin. And after their crushing defeats earlier in the day, the last thing that they need is another blow to their confidence, another loss when they’ve already suffered so many in the last few hours.

But now, as he stares down at the sleeping boy leaned against his wall, and with the memory of his team trying their best during the separate races, he feels different. Better. Like maybe a medley relay is exactly what they need, after all.

_ You waited for me to come home, Makoto? _ he thinks, a small smile crossing his face.  _ Stupid. We have a race to prepare for, you know? _

* * *

“There you two are!” Gou exclaims, relief clear in her voice as Nagisa and Rei jog up to the rest of the group. “What were you guys doing? You’re late!”

“Actually…” Nagisa starts, then turns to Rei proudly.

“We were practicing our exchange in the pool!” Rei continues with a smile, reaching up to adjust his glasses.

“That means there’s no way Rei-chan can fail!” Nagisa finishes with a grin. “So let’s go out there and win, okay?”

“Time to show everyone that our training paid off,” Makoto says with a chuckle.

“Yeah!” Gou agrees. “Everyone, give it your best shot today!”

They don’t have much time to prepare. Nagisa ushers everyone into the dressing rooms right after Gou checks them in, changing into their swimsuits and pulling their goggles and swim caps on in a rush. Haruka finds himself getting nervous, even though he’s been doing his best not to let his hopes get too high. They haven’t practiced for a team relay at all, and the last time he’d swam in one had been over four years ago. He doesn’t know if he’ll be able to do it.

Still, he has to try. This is their last chance to go to regionals, and his last chance to swim in a relay with his friends until the next year. He  _ wants _ to do it, despite his trepidation when Rei had brought it up earlier in the year. He can’t let the past hang onto him anymore. If he doesn’t move on from the grade school relay now, when will he?

They line up single-file at the starting block, Makoto in the front, with Nagisa behind him, then Rei after that, and finally Haruka at the end. He casts a surreptitious glance around, but he doesn’t recognize any of the schools that he’s going up against. Samezuka must be in a different heat than them, then.

Makoto jumps cleanly into the water as five beeps sounds across the pool, turning to face Nagisa as he holds onto the supports at the base of the starting block. He gives the others a curt, determined nod, his face set into an unusually serious expression.

“Set!” the announcer calls as the timers prepare their stopwatches.

“Good luck, Mako-chan!” Nagisa calls, his voice full of hope.

“Good luck, Makoto-senpai!” Rei adds. Haruka leans around both of them and makes eye contact with Makoto, hoping his expression says what he’s feeling. Thankfulness, and determination, and a happiness he hasn’t felt in a long, long time. His nerves have rushed away like the tide receding into the ocean, leaving the beach out to dry.

“Go!” the announcer yells, their voice accompanied by yet another beep. Makoto launches himself backwards, his arms and legs moving in tandem as he furiously swims towards the other side of the pool. His mouth hangs open as he draws in large, steady breaths, his stroke rough but synchronized.

“Fight, Mako-chan!” Nagisa yells, closing his eyes and balling his hands into fists. “You can do it!”

Distantly, Haruka hears the sound of Gou and the others in the stands cheering Makoto on, but he’s more entranced by his friend’s swimming than their voices. Makoto seems so much faster than he had the last time he’d swam, like there’s nothing holding him back. He cuts through the water as if it’s nothing, his arms straight as they move through the air and into the pool. It’s only the first quarter of the relay, but he’s already brought them up to fifth place against the other teams.

_ Amazing. _

Makoto hits the wall and reverses back towards them just as quickly, passing another swimmer on his turn.  _ Fourth, _ Haruka thinks, his heart jumping in his chest.  _ Can we really…? _

Before he knows it, Makoto’s hand is splaying against the edge of the pool, and Nagisa is diving in over his head. His entry angle is off, but it hardly matters. Nagisa has always started at a medium pace and picked up speed after the turn, ever since they were kids. His stroke isn’t as powerful as the bigger swimmers’ ones are, but his lean body leaves little room for resistance against the water.

“ _ Go _ , Nagisa!” Rei yells in a surprising change of character. He and Makoto are fixated on Nagisa’s stroke as he reaches the other end of the pool, and sure enough, he launches himself past another swimmer as he turns back around. His arms and legs are distorted under the water, almost looking as if they grow longer with every stroke.

_ Just like last time. _

Haruka’s eyes are drawn away from the pool for a moment as Rei braces himself on the starting block, his goggles securely fastened around the back of his head. He tenses as Nagisa approaches, closer and closer, until at last the moment they’ve all been waiting for arrives. Nagisa slams his hand against the wall of the pool with a “Rei-chan! Now!” and almost immediately, Rei dives in over his head.

Haruka has to admire his friend’s butterfly, especially considering how short a time he’d had to prepare for the tournament. His form is near perfect--all that time studying the theory of swimming must have really paid off. He’s fast, his arms creating little splashes as he uses them to propel himself through the water. It really is beautiful, and impressive.

Rei hits the wall and starts swimming back, and for one strange second, Haruka is surprised. He’d been expecting a head of red hair to pop up from under the surface of the pool, not dark blue.

He pushes the thought out of his head, stepping up onto the starting block and wrapping his fingers along the underside.  _ Focus, _ he thinks, zeroing in on Rei’s form as he approaches the wall.  _ You can’t let him distract you again. _

The moment Rei’s hand touches the side of the pool, he’s off.

The water greets him warmly this time, allowing him to push through it with little resistance. He glides through the pool, arms stretched out in front of him, until at last his head breaks the water and he starts to kick. The sound of the packed venue, of his teammates cheering him on from behind him and of Gou and Amakata-san and Coach Sasabe in the stands, all fades to nothing as his attention is drawn to the water. There’s no bright, blinding light this time, only a soft glow that could very well be sunlight glinting off the surface of the pool, but instead of disappointing him, its absence motivates him. He’s  _ going  _ to win this relay, he’s  _ going  _ to make his team proud, and he’s  _ going _ to go to regionals.

He turns his head for the next breath, and a flash of red catches his attention. Time seems to stop, everything freezing in place as Haruka makes eye contact with-

With Rin.

Rin is watching.

Rin is  _ watching him swim _ , his face frozen in an expression of… Of what? Shock is obvious in the way his eyes widen, the way his mouth drops open, but there’s more to it than that. His hands are balled into fists at his sides, and his eyebrows are tilted upwards, almost as if he’s…

Sad. Betrayed. Heartbroken.

Haruka knows those feelings all too well.

So on his next stroke, he holds his hand in the air a second longer than normal and extends his pinky in the air, hoping against hope that Rin will understand.

* * *

The bus ride to regionals is an ordeal.

Nagisa is positive that he’d left his goggles at home, prompting the whole team to do a full-out search of their whole area before Makoto points out that they’re still around his neck. Rei spills water all over himself in the middle of an argument with Nagisa, Haruka almost gets left behind during one of their rest stops because there’s a pool across the street, and Makoto almost breaks his phone trying to read the regionals schedule while Nagisa climbs on top of him.

But despite everything, they make it to the hotel in one piece. Makoto checks them in while Haruka keeps an eye on Rei and Nagisa, who are still on-and-off arguing with each other. They drop their bags in their respective rooms, the second years in one and the first years in another, then head out to town to get a bite to eat.

Haruka gets antsy during the night, his heart pounding in his chest too loudly for him to fall asleep, so he slips past Makoto and out the door before his friend can protest and hits the town again for a run. He needs to tire himself out if he’s going to get any rest tonight, counterproductive as it might seem considering he needs plenty of energy for the relay the next day. His mind is buzzing, and it seems to spread from his head to his fingers and toes, adrenaline mixed with nerves he’ll never in a million years admit to having.

At last, once he feels sufficiently worn out, he heads back to the hotel. He wipes sweat from his face with the hem of his shirt and collapses into bed, not even bothering to change before he closes his eyes and immediately falls asleep.

* * *

He dreams that he’s lying on a beach.

Makoto and Nagisa are a little bit further down, wading into the shallow parts of the ocean, a pink kite in Nagisa’s hands and a green one in Makoto’s. The kites are flying high in the air, their tails made up of a familiar bright red string. Rei is standing on the shore in front of them, building a sand castle with shells and starfish all hung up around the outside with the same red thread.

“Hey, Haru.”

He turns his head to the side, feeling the sand shift under his body, and watches as Rin looks down at him. He seems softer than before, more like the little kid Haruka had known in grade school than the angry, victory-obsessed teen he knows now. His hair blows gently in the wind, settling around his face messily as the breeze dies down.

“Remember our promise?” he says in a soft, personal voice, his words meant for Haruka and Haruka alone. As if to explain further, he holds his pinky up in between their faces, a small smile on his lips.

“Our promise?” Haruka repeats, eyes still on Rin’s. “About staying the same after you left?”

“Yes, Haru,” Rin says, shaking his head and letting out a light, airy laugh. When he opens his eyes, they’re no longer soft. Suddenly he’s all hard angles and lines drawn with a heavy hand, and the beach doesn’t feel as warm anymore.

“You changed,” Haruka says in a quiet voice, his heart sinking. Rin looks at him, unamused, and all of a sudden he’s so much taller than him, and his string is trailing down to the ground and past Haruka’s own hand and into the ocean, forever connected to someone that he doesn’t know. Someone that isn’t him.

“So did you,” Rin says coldly.

Haruka’s blood turns to ice. He can’t deny it, no matter how much he wants to.

He doesn’t say a word.

* * *

Rin’s race is first thing the next morning.

Makoto leads them to their seats as soon as the opening ceremonies are over. Once again, they’ve got a good lookout point in terms of watching the race, which is both a blessing and a curse. Haruka knows before the 100 meter free even starts that he’ll be on the edge of his seat the whole time.

He watches as Rin climbs to the starting block, goggles on, hair masked beneath his swim cap. He takes his mark as the whistle blows, his mouth pressed into a grim frown. He looks different somehow, less determined and more desperate, less composed and more chaotic. Haruka wonders what happened that made him seem so different than the confident, victorious Rin that had laughed in his face the day before the relay.

He’s not triumphant now. It’s like he’s a whole different person.

“Go!”

Rin launches himself off the starting block, only he’s a second late. He hits the water messily, creating more of a splash than Haruka’s ever seen him make in all their years together. He blinks in shock as two, then three other swimmers pass Rin easily, leaving him behind in the very first leg.

“What’s going on?” Nagisa asks, eyes wide. “Is Rin-chan…”

“He can make it up on the turn,” Haruka says, fixated on the figure in the pool. Rin  _ has _ to make it up. There’s no way he’s going to lose, not in front of all of these people. Not in front of Haruka.

Not  _ again _ .

The Samezuka team chants encouragements from their place in the stands, but Rin doesn’t seem to hear them. He’s halfway to the other wall when his strokes start to slow, as if he’s already tired out. But that  _ can’t _ be the case. Rin has more stamina than practically anyone else Haruka knows, and then some. There’s no way he’s experiencing fatigue halfway through the very first leg.

His strokes are sloppy, messy, desperate, and Haruka feels his heart squeeze in his chest as he approaches the wall. Something is wrong. Something is very,  _ very _ wrong with Rin. He reaches the wall seconds after the other swimmers, pushing off weakly and almost driving himself into one of the dividers before righting his path again. Haruka watches, horrified, as he does his best to catch up with the others, only to falter yet again.

“Rin…” he whispers, his heart squeezing.

“Onii-chan,” Gou echoes, clutching her hands to her chest.

“What’s wrong with him?” Nagisa asks in an impossibly small, wavery voice. For once, none of them have an answer.

Rin is a good few meters behind the second to last swimmer when he finally touches the wall, reaching up to tear off his swim cap and goggles. His shoulders shake as he heaves in breath after unsteady breath. Even from far away, Haruka can hear his wheezy, aching coughs, sounding as if more than a little pool water had made its way into his lungs.

Rin doesn’t even look at the scoreboard, nor at his classmates. He keeps his head down as he attempts to push himself up and out of the pool, but his arms shake and he ends up crashing back into the water anyway. Haruka feels tears start to build in his eyes and has to blink hard to make them go away.

He shouldn’t care that Rin lost the race. But he does. And it hurts just as much as if it had been him in his place.

He stands abruptly, startling the others, and starts towards the exits. He has to get to Rin, has to get to him  _ now _ , before he can cry, before he can  _ leave again _ . He can’t handle another loss, and losing Rin is the biggest loss he could possibly suffer.

“Haru!” Makoto calls, standing as well.

“Haru-chan!” Nagisa echoes, following after.

“I’ll go, too!” Rei exclaims. Haruka doesn’t bother to slow down for them. Nothing matters right now, except for the boy with the faded string and the wine red hair who  _ cannot leave them again _ . Not this time.

They run down the hall, Makoto calling hurried apologies to the people they bump into. Nagisa starts to fall behind, and Rei has to help him along to keep up as they sprint to and fro, heads turning, scanning for any sign of Rin.

They aren’t gone long before a loud  _ bang _ echoes throughout the hallway in the opposite direction, followed by a litany of words in an ever familiar raised voice. “This way!” Haruka yells, turning to the hallway and breaking out into a sprint again. Rin is angry, Rin is yelling, and he can’t decide if that’s better or worse than crying.

“ _ It doesn’t matter!!! _ ” is the first thing he hears as he rounds the corner, skidding to a stop as he takes in the scene in front of him. Rin is practically snarling at a young, gray-haired boy he vaguely recognizes from their joint practice, eyes flashing with anger and disappointment.

“I don’t give a damn about what happens!” Rin continues, sharp teeth bared. “Obviously I’m no better than this. Why else would they have taken me off the relay?!”

_ They what? _ Haruka thinks, his heart pounding in his chest. It had been a shock to learn that Rin was joining Samezuka’s relay team, and so soon after Iwatobi had had their victory during the first tournament, but it’s nothing compared to the fact that he’d then been taken off. Rin is one of the best swimmers Haruka has ever met in his  _ life _ . Why would anyone decide that he isn’t good enough to be on a medley relay team?

“Forget it,” Rin growls, fists clenched. “I quit! I’m done with swimming!”

“Matsuoka-senpai!” the gray haired boy exclaims, flinching as Rin kicks over a half-full trashcan, sending garbage scattering all over the floor. “Please, hold on a minute!”

Rin ignores him, turning away from the four bystanders and walking down the hallway. His shoulders are hunched, and his gait is slow, defeated,  _ done _ .

The young boy looks between Rin’s receding figure and the garbage on the floor once or twice before his eyes catch on Haruka. He looks surprised to see the Iwatobi team there, but he doesn’t say a word to them. Instead, he turns and chases after Rin, his pleas for him to slow down met with silence.

Haruka feels his legs grow shaky. His head is buzzing and his vision starts to blur, and the floor seems to fall out beneath him. He drops to the ground, pulling his knees to his chest and burying his face in his arms.

Rin is quitting again.

Rin, the flashy new kid. The one with half a string. The foreign exchange student. The only one who knows about Haruka’s gift. The one who’d kept his secret, even when their relationship crashed to the ground. The one he’d almost kissed, the last time Rin had gotten this upset. The one he’ll never get to swim with again. The only one who matters.

This time, the tears do come, and fast. They leak out from Haruka’s eyes, falling to the floor with soft pattering sounds, like that of a slow rain. He sniffs, moving his head so he can wipe at his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket and curling in on himself more.

“Rin-chan… was removed from the relay?” Nagisa half-asks, half-states. “But why?”

“We thought we’d be able to race him if we made it to the final,” Makoto says, his voice wavering. “But… Ah, Haru-chan!”

Haruka shakes his head, his eyes wet. “I won’t get to swim with Rin again,” he whispers as more tears fall, creating tiny circles on the ground beneath him.

“Haru…” Makoto says, at a loss for words.

“Haru-chan,” Nagisa whispers, his voice tight. “What do we do now? The preliminaries are about to start. Shouldn’t we just focus on our own race?”

“But he can’t swim like this!” Makoto protests. “Maybe we should forefit.”

The four of them stand there in silence, none of them knowing what to do. Nagisa sounds seconds away from crying, himself, and Haruka doesn’t think he could handle that.

Surprisingly, it’s Rei that speaks first. “I have something to tell everyone,” he announces, sounding apprehensive.

“Huh?” Nagisa asks. “Rei-chan?”

“Last night,” Rei starts, then pauses unsurely. “Last night, Rin-san called me out to talk.”

Haruka blinks, accidentally letting more tears fall to the floor. He raises his head ever so slightly, staring up at Rei.

“He told me that when he said he wanted to quit swimming in middle school, it wasn’t because he lost to Haruka-senpai,” Rei continues, building confidence. “He hit a wall in Australia, and his confidence was shaken. It was only after he returned to Japan and raced Haruka-senpai that he could put his earlier failures behind him.”

“Rin…?” Nagisa says, his voice almost disbelieving. Haruka feels the same way, as if his whole world view had just been shattered.

_ It… wasn’t because of me? _

“He watched us swim at prefectures,” Rei explains, “and it made him remember what it was like to swim in a relay with everyone. He wanted to experience that feeling again, and so he joined Samezuka’s relay team. He said he wanted to give us the best relay ever.

“He didn’t care about the race. He didn’t care about winning and losing. He just wanted to swim with you guys again.” Rei lifts his head and  _ smiles _ , eyes shining. “To swim with the best teammates he could ask for.”

Haruka’s eyes widen, and he pushes himself to his feet unsteadily. “How do you know?” he asks, staring at Rei with an edge of desperation.

“Because I feel the same way,” Rei explains, splaying his hands against his chest. “Don’t we all? Don’t  _ you? _ Haruka-senpai, there’s someone you want to swim with, right?”

Haruka takes a shaky breath, his hands trembling at his sides. Because of course there is. From the moment they’d met, there had only been one person he’d wanted to swim with, wanted to  _ be _ with. One person who meant more to him than anyone else ever could.

Rin.

And really, with someone like that at his side, who needs a soulmate, anyway?

* * *

He finds Rin under an old, green-leaved tree that looks ever so similar to the one they’d stood under in their last year of grade school, right before Rin had told them that he was leaving. They’d made a garden in front of that tree, Haruka remembers, with bricks that proudly displayed their favorite English sayings.

He, of course, had written  _ free _ .

He stops, bracing his hands on his knees and panting, trying to catch his breath. With only a few minutes left before their heat in the relay, the four of them had split up to cover more ground, and he’d sprinted to and fro, desperately calling Rin’s name and hoping against hope that he’d find him.

He’s scared. Scared of what will happen when he confronts Rin. Scared that he’ll never get the chance to swim with him again. Scared that Rin will reject him again, laugh in his face, pull him close the way Haruka had once done to him and tell him just how much he doesn’t need him.

But Rin does need them. Rei had said so himself.

“Haru?”

Haruka blinks out of his trance, still trying to catch his breath. Rin is staring at him, surprise, anger, and sadness intermingling on his face, as if he can’t quite decide what he should be feeling.

“Why are you here?” Rin continues, anger winning out. “Come to laugh at my pathetic loss?”

“Rin…” Haruka starts, but his lungs are burning and he’s freezing up, he doesn’t know what to  _ say _ …

“You saw what happened in the free,” Rin snarls, gesturing towards the venue. “And I was taken out of the relay, too. The world is laughing at me. So join in! No need to pity me.”

Haruka flinches at his words, each one spat out with more vigor and unbearable sadness than the last. He opens his mouth, but no words come out, his mind a total blank.  _ Say something! _ he urges himself despairingly, gritting his teeth together.

“I told you to  _ laugh _ !” Rin roars, throwing his arms outwards. “That’s all I’m good for, anyway. I’m not even good enough to race you guys in a relay!”

“Calm down, Rin!” At last, his words are back, but they’re all muddled together in his head. He needs to comfort Rin, to tell him that it’s okay, that he still has a place with them. (That he’ll always have a place with Haruka, the two of them against the rest of the world, against the strings that wrap around their lives.)

“Shut up! What would you know?!” Rin takes a deep, shuddering breath, eyes flashing unstably.

“I know,” Haruka tells him, hand coming up to clutch at his shirt. “I know how fun it is to swim with friends. I know how good it feels to swim in a relay together. You were the one who taught me that, Rin! You’re the reason I-”

“Shut _ up _ !” Rin stumbles forward, his hands reaching out to grab at the collar of Haruka’s jacket. Haruka stumbles backwards, barely managing to catch his footing before they go careening to the ground.

“I understand now!” he continues, quick and desperate. “I found the answer! Why it is I swim! Who I’m swimming  _ for _ ! Rin, I-”

“ _I told you to_ _shut up!!!_ ”

Rin pulls his arm back before driving it forward in a jab aimed at Haruka’s chest. He trips to the side, stumbling backwards again and losing his balance. He hits the ground with a dull thump and a flash of pain, but he doesn’t have time to right himself before Rin is dropping down on top of him, hands once again fisted in Haruka’s jacket. His fight-or-flight reflexes kick in, and he uses all of his strength to flip himself on top of Rin, desperate to calm him down, to make him  _ understand _ .

But Rin is bigger and stronger than him, even after all of his training. He neatly continues the roll until Haruka is once again under him and out of breath, too winded to push Rin off again. Rin’s eyes flash angrily, his mouth pulled down into an unstable frown. He looks seconds away from attempting to punch Haruka’s teeth out yet again when his eyes catch on something on the ground a few feet away.

His face falls slack. His arms drop to his sides. If Haruka’s not mistaken, he’s tearing up again.

He turns his head to the side and catches sight of the words  _ for the team _ written carefully in the dirt in his own handwriting. He’d done it just hours before, on sheer impulse alone, before Makoto had called him over to wait for the others.

“This tree looks like the sakura one we had in the school yard,” he says slowly, looking back up at Rin. “Isn’t that why you were here? Because it reminded you of the way things used to be?”

A hot tear falls onto his face, dripping down his cheek and onto the ground and leaving a cool, wet trail on his skin. It’s not his.

It’s Rin’s.

“Why?” Rin whispers, his voice heartbreakingly soft. “Why can’t I be free? I want to swim with you guys… I want to swim in a relay with you guys. I  _ miss _ you, Haru.”

A second tear joins the first, bouncing off of Haruka’s cheek, and then a third slips down the bridge of his nose and rests just below his eye. Rin reaches up in an attempt to wipe the tears away, but no matter how hard he tries, they keep coming.

“Rin…” Haruka breathes reverently, not daring to say it any louder.

“All I ever wanted was to swim with you again,” Rin sobs, his voice breaking in a way that tears at Haruka’s heart. “I didn’t know how I could, or even  _ if _ I could… I didn’t know if you’d want me, after everything… And now it’s too late.”

“No, it’s not too late,” Haruka says, pushing himself into a sitting position and holding a hand out. “Rin, we can still swim together. The relay…”

“There’s no room for me on your team,” Rin points out tearily. “You already have a butterfly swimmer.”

“Rei is okay with it,” Haruka assures him, determined. They’ve come so far, faced challenge after challenge to be able to swim together again. He’s not about to let it all go to waste. “Let’s go, Rin. We can still make it if we hurry.”

Rin stands shakiky, unbalanced and unsteady as he casts a glance in the direction of the venue. They’ll have to run to make it, Haruka thinks, but it’s still possible.

“The others…” Rin says, still trying to deny himself the chance to swim. “They’ll be upset.”

“Of course they won’t be,” Haruka sighs, shaking his head. “The only person standing in your way is you, you know.”

He takes a step towards the venue, then another, and when he feels eyes on his back he turns around. Rin is still standing there, stock still, his face full of disbelief. Like Haruka would turn around and yell  _ just kidding! _ and leave him here all on his own, after everything they’ve just said.

“Come on, Rin,” he says, reaching out a hand yet again. “It’s my turn to show you a sight you’ve never seen before.”

* * *

Rin dives into the water, soaring above Nagisa’s head, and for an instant the light reflecting off the water reflects Rin’s string, making it look longer and longer under the surface of the pool.

Nagisa is cheering, and Makoto, too. In the stands, Gou and Rei and Coach Sasabe and Amakata-san are calling cheers of their own.

_ See, Rin? _ Haruka thinks softly as he lines up on the starting block.  _ We need you just as much as you need us. _

_ And I need you even more than that. _

He doesn’t process the thought, doesn’t bother to analyze it, as he flies through the air above Rin’s head. As Rin calls his name, raising his left hand in the air with his pinky extended. As he cuts through the water faster than he’s ever swum before, stroke after stroke, with his friends’ voices cheering him on from all around, and a glowing, gleaming light just out of his reach, so close he can  _ almost touch it… _

It’s only after he’s finished the relay, after Makoto has helped him out of the pool and Nagisa has started to cry from sheer happiness, when Rin’s arms close around his body, pulling him tight to Rin’s chest as he weeps into Haruka’s hair, that he understands.

Understands why Rin matters so,  _ so _ much, and why he matters the way he does. Understands why, even after all this time apart and all this time spent separating themselves from each other, Rin is the only one who can make him feel the way he does. Understands why he’d never cared about finding his string in the first place, had only ever been interested in Rin’s, had only ever wanted their anomalies to stay the way they were.

It’s love. Simple as that.

“You showed me the best sight I could have asked for!” Rin sobs, hot tears spilling down his face and onto Haruka’s shoulder. He wraps his arms around Rin’s back as his shoulders shake, closing his eyes and melting into the embrace.  _ I love you, _ he thinks experimentally, holding his breath. It feels right, almost  _ too _ right, and it sends a shiver of fear down his spine, one he pushes away as soon as he feels it. He can’t allow his new revelations to show, not now, when things are just starting to look up again.

Because there’s no way it would work out. Rin has a soulmate somewhere out there, Haruka’s sure of it. Because if he has a string, even part of one, he must have a soulmate. And Haruka doesn’t. He can’t get in the way of destiny, of fate, not without a clean concious.

These feelings, of wanting and yearning and finally accepting, are dangerous.  _ Love _ is dangerous.

Especially for someone as stringless as him.

* * *

Things are different now that Rin is back.

When Haruka turns to look at Rin during joint practices and hangouts, he’s actually  _ there _ . When he wants to know Rin’s opinion on something, he can  _ ask him _ now. If he wants to talk about the strings, he once again has someone to turn to.

At last, at long last, they’re together again. No distance to set them apart, and no petty rivalry or far away dream to set them against each other. They’re really, truly close again, and Haruka thinks he couldn’t be happier.

He has to protect this feeling, this relationship. He  _ has _ to. He can’t afford to lose Rin again.

So no matter the cost, he promises himself, he won’t do a thing about his newfound feelings for Rin. No matter how strong his love is, no matter how many times he fantasizes about waking up with Rin at his side, their strings tied together seamlessly, he  _ will not _ jeopardize their relationship again. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t care about his own lack of a soulmate anymore.  _ Rin _ cares about  _ his _ , and Haruka can’t expect him to up and drop his hopes and dreams of finding them just because he wants Rin to himself.

Besides, out of all of the things they talk about and cry over (on Rin’s part, at least) on the days after the relay, one thing remains unresolved; the almost kiss.

Haruka doesn’t know if Rin’s forgotten about it, or if he simply doesn’t want to bring it up, but whatever the reason, Rin doesn’t say a thing about their intimate confrontation. And as weeks pass, and Haruka gets used to the fluttering in his stomach and the blush on his cheeks whenever Rin comes near, he finds it harder and harder to try to bring it up, himself. It’s not like he can just play it off as childish nonsense--his mother used to say he was never much of a child, even when he was young, so he doubts Rin would believe him. So if Rin wants to drop the memory like a burning hot coal, Haruka will let him.

Even if that coal burns itself into his brain, twisting into his thoughts and dreams until it’s practically a constant in the back of his mind, just waiting to slip out.

* * *

They’re walking along the beach when it comes up again.

The weather’s been good for almost a week, so Nagisa convinces everyone to go to the ocean after school. He even texts Rin to meet up with them, and to everyone’s surprise, he goes along easily.

At first, Haruka doesn’t want to go. He has to study, and he’d rather spend his time  _ in _ the water than walking alongside it. He’d actually kind of been banking on Rin declining so he wouldn’t be the only one, but after Nagisa bounces up to him with Rin’s affirmation, he knows he can’t say no. Besides, it  _ would _ be nice to spend some time with Rin. They haven’t seen much of each other since school started up again.

He and Makoto wait for Rei, Nagisa, and Gou by the main entrance, Makoto chattering about the weather and how nice it will be to relax with everyone and take some time off. Haruka’s just starting to get impatient when the lowerclassmen show up, Nagisa practically dragging Rei along.

“There you are! We were starting to get worried,” Makoto says with a laugh. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah!” Nagisa exclaims, answering for the both of them. “Rei-chan was just talking to the teacher.”

“I was barely finished with my conversation,” Rei says with a humph, although he doesn’t look terribly bothered.

“Yeah, but I didn’t want to wait anymore,” Nagisa chirps, unaffected. “Plus, you made Haru-chan and Mako-chan wait! That’s rude!”

“I apologize,” Rei says, if only to humor him. Gou looks sheepish as well, ducking her head towards Makoto respectfully.

“We’re ready whenever you are,” she says. Makoto smiles, then turns towards Haruka.

“Should we be on our way, then, Haru-chan?” he suggests, tilting his head towards the door.

The five of them head out, Nagisa in the lead with the other four trailing behind. Makoto walks next to Haruka quietly, only breaking his silence with the occasional reply to Nagisa’s chatter. Haruka tunes them all out, turning his attention to the ocean as they approach the beach. The week of good weather only seems to be getting better--it’s a nice, warm temperature out, and the sun shines brightly in the sky, unblocked by the few wispy clouds above them. It’s the perfect day to go to the beach, even if they won’t be swimming.

“Rin-chan!” Nagisa exclaims suddenly, breaking away from the group to run towards a figure in the distance. Haruka looks over, immediately zeroing in on a familiar head of red hair and a small wisp of matching red string heading towards them. Rin raises his hand in greeting as Nagisa bounces up to him, his mouth moving in an inaudible hello.

“He’s early,” Makoto comments, watching as Rin reaches down to ruffle Nagisa’s hair like a dog.

“I wonder if he took an early train,” Gou replies, glancing between him and Haruka. “Did he say anything about leaving class over the phone?”

Haruka doesn’t answer, simply following the others as they head towards Rin. He’s still wearing his school uniform, so he must have come from Samezuka, although what he’s doing at the beach ten minutes before he’s supposed to be there Haruka has no idea. He waits patiently as Rin greets the others, tousling his sister’s hair in the same way he had Nagisa’s and saying a polite hello to Rei and Makoto before he finally turns his attention on Haruka.

“Nice to see you,” he says with a small, personal smile, his whole face softening for a second. Haruka feels heat rising into his cheeks and looks away quickly, hoping Rin won’t notice.

“You, too,” he replies quietly. Then he adds, “You’re early,” just to break the awkward sincerity.

Rin chuckles, and when Haruka chances a glance back over at him he almost looks sheepish. “I told my teachers I had a ‘family engagement’,” he explains, making air quotes with his fingers. Haruka feels his heart skip a beat at the words. Does Rin really think of them as family? He probably just means Gou, but what if he doesn’t? After all, he’s never been the most literal person--in fact, he’s far from it.

“Rin-chan! Haru-chan! Come on!” Nagisa calls, waving them over as he walks alongside the ocean. He’s already taken his shoes off and is wading into the shallow tide as the others watch amusedly. “The water feels really good!”

“We’d better go,” Rin says, stepping onto the warm, dry sand. “I don’t think Nagisa’s intent on waiting.”

Haruka follows along, taking a second to adjust from the hard concrete to the soft sand of the beach. The others are already a good few feet ahead of them, so he has to walk quickly to catch up.

He doesn’t pay much attention to the conversation at first, more interested in watching the water wash up to the sand, then draw itself back out. The push and pull of the ocean reminds him of the way the strings move with the hands they’re attached to, never quite staying still even in the calmest of moments. He only snaps out of his thoughts when Makoto calls his name a second time, an exasperated smile on his lips.

“We have swim practice tomorrow,” he reminds Haruka, as if he’s afraid he might strip and run into the ocean at a moment’s notice.

“I know,” Haruka replies, dragging his eyes away from the water.

“Hey, Haru-chan!” Nagisa calls, springing up beside him. “What do you think about Ama-chan and Goro-chan?”

“What about them?” Haruka asks, wondering when the conversation devolved into gossip about their homeroom teacher and their coach.

“Don’t you think they’ve been looking at each other funny the past few meets? Do you think they’re interested in each other?”

Haruka shrugs, unwilling to admit that he doesn’t need to watch people’s expressions to gauge their levels of interest. The strings don’t lie, and Amakata and Sasabe’s string is no exception. “I suppose,” he says, if only to appease Nagisa, but Rin raises an eyebrow at him, too.

“Really?” he pushes, holding his left hand close to his chest so that only Haruka can see and raising his pinky questioningly. Haruka glances down at it, then gives a slight nod.

“See, Gou-chan? I told you!” Nagisa crows, spreading his arms out wide. “We’re matchmakers!”

“Hey, Nagisa-kun!” Gou protests, crossing her arms. “I told you to call me Kou, already!”

Makoto laughs, his steps quickening as he hastens to catch up with the others. Rei follows suit, chasing after Nagisa with a string of chastisements on his lips. Haruka makes no attempt to quicken his pace, and Rin seems content to keep up their slow amble as well.

They walk in silence for a few minutes, the crash of the ocean lapping against the beach the only sound for a good thirty meters. The sun shines brightly, warming his face and hands where his skin is exposed and casting long, dark shadows on the ground. It truly is a beautiful day out--Nagisa hadn’t been lying to get them to come with him, at the very least.

Haruka is just starting to drift off into his own thoughts again when Rin breaks the silence.

“Hey, Haru?”

He stops, ducking his head to catch Haruka’s eye, his expression sheepish and almost hesitant. The wind blows through his hair, sending a few wine red strands spilling in front of his face, and Haruka has to bite back the urge to reach out and tuck them back in place. Instead he turns towards Rin and stares back, waiting for him to speak again.

“I hate to ask, but… Well, you still haven’t… You haven’t found the other side of my string yet, have you?”

Haruka’s eyes dart down towards Rin’s finger immediately, his heart squeezing as he follows the meter of thread until it fades out into nothingness. He doesn’t want to answer the question, doesn’t want to tell Rin the truth; that he still has no idea who Rin’s red string is connected to after all these years. But he can’t lie to him, either. It wouldn’t be fair to get Rin’s hopes up, only to let him down later on. He has to be honest, no matter how much it hurts them both. ( _ Trust me, _ he thinks, but doesn’t dare say out loud,  _ it’ll hurt me more to say than for you to hear. _ )

He closes his eyes, unwilling to watch Rin’s face fall as he shakes his head. “No,” he chokes out, his voice distant even to his own ears. He wishes that he could say yes, find Rin’s soulmate and make him happy, and yet a selfish, horrible part of him is secretly glad that Rin’s string hasn’t fully appeared yet. He doesn’t want whoever’s lucky enough to be tied to Rin to take him away, and he feels awful about it.

He forces himself to open his eyes and look at Rin, at the split-second of disappointment on his face before he schools it into something more neutral. His hair is even more of a mess than before, blowing prettily in the seabreeze before settling back to frame his face.

“And yours…?” he prompts, his voice light and strained as he nods towards Haruka’s hand. Haruka doesn’t even bother to check, shaking his head quickly as if he can dispel the thought just like that.

“No,” he says again, much less conflicted. At least his string, or lack thereof, isn’t something he needs to feel guilty  _ or  _ relieved about.

Rin looks down at Haruka’s hand again thoughtfully, his sharp teeth biting into his bottom lip for a second. “Then I guess we’ll just have to keep looking together, huh?” he decides at last, a more genuine smile crossing his face. Despite his earlier guilt, Haruka can’t help but smile back minutely.

“Yeah,” he agrees, looking away. He focuses on his friends further up the beach, watching as Nagisa tries to push Rei into the ocean and Makoto chastises him for his recklessness. Their strings dance and sway as they chase each other around the beach like tails on kites, passing through each other instead of tangling. A moment later, Rin kicks off his shoes and bends down to pick them up, then holds his free hand out to Haruka.

“Want to wade in?” he asks, tilting his head towards the water. Haruka casts one more glance at the others, then toes his own shoes off and accepts the hand Rin holds out to him, keeping his eyes off of the red string for once. Rin smiles again, flashing his sharp teeth as he leads Haruka into the ocean.

Their linked hands swing back and forth subtly as they stand there, letting tiny waves crash against their legs and soaking up the late afternoon sun. And despite the coldness of the water and their friends’ cries coming from behind them, Haruka finds that there’s nothing he enjoys more than this, the feeling of Rin’s hand in his a comforting anchor tying him to the ground in a way no string in the world could.

* * *

Sometimes Haruka wishes he’d had the chance to meet Rin’s grandmother.

He doesn’t know very much about her--in fact, he only knows three things. One, her name was Matsuoka Kaori. Two, she’d helped Rin’s mother raise him and Gou the year after their father had died, before she’d passed away as well. And three, the most important fact of all… she’d been able to see the strings, too.

It would have been nice, he thinks, to know someone else who sees the world the way he does. Maybe she would have known more about the strings than him. Maybe she would have been able to explain Rin’s faded string, and Haruka’s lack of one altogether.

Or maybe she wouldn’t have known what to make of it, either. But Haruka can always dream.

* * *

“Do you ever think about our friends’ strings?” Rin asks, stretching his hand out towards the sky. The sun is beginning to set, disappearing beneath the ocean and tinting the clouds above orange. His string seems to glow in the soft light, matching his wind-tousled hair perfectly.

His question catches Haruka by surprise. It’s a little out of the blue, considering they’d just been sitting in silence for the past few minutes. They haven’t talked about the strings since the day at the beach a few weeks prior, either, but it sounds like Rin’s been pondering about them for a while yet again.

“What do you mean?” Haruka asks, laying his head on his crossed arms and gazing up at Rin. (He’s been doing that a lot, lately. He can’t seem to help it.)

“Like, who are they attached to?” Rin explains, looking up at the sky and moving his fingers rhythmically. “Sousuke’s, and Makoto’s, and Nagisa’s, and the others’, too. Haven’t you thought about it before?”

“Not really,” Haruka admits, feeling a little bit bad. He thinks about his lack of a string so much, and Rin’s faded one, too, but he hasn’t really considered who his friends’ strings might be connected to. He’d always figured that when the time came, they’d meet their soulmates, and he’d be able to see the connection firsthand.

“So you don’t know any of their soulmates,” Rin says, more of a statement than anything. “There aren’t any pairs I should know about, right?”

“No,” Haruka replies, shaking his head slightly. “I’d tell you if I knew.”

“Would you?” Rin asks, catching him off guard once again. Haruka frowns, pausing to think about his answer. He’s never been particularly invested in his friends’ love lives, even though he’s the one who can see their true soulmates. It’s not like any of them were ever keen on dating, either, so he hadn’t  _ had _ anything to tell Rin in the past. But if he knew about a connection between one of their friends and their soulmate, would he say something? Even if they hadn’t yet gotten together?

“I don’t know,” he answers truthfully, turning his attention to the quickly disappearing sun. “I told you about Amakata-san and Coach Sasabe, didn’t I?”

“I suppose,” Rin says. “I guess it  _ would _ be kind of weird to know who’s supposed to end up with who before it happens.”

_ It’s always like that for me, _ Haruka thinks. He doesn’t have a choice in whether or not he sees connections--it’s not like the strings have an on/off switch, as much as he wishes they did. The only two connections he can’t see are-

Well, there’s no point on dwelling on it anymore.

“You know, I used to think that you had some kind of superpower or something,” Rin says, breaking him out of his thoughts. “I thought it was so cool that you could see the strings, just like my grandmother. But the longer I think about it, the worse it sounds.”

Haruka says nothing, keeping his eyes trained on the sky as the last sliver of sun sinks beneath the water.

“I mean, you can’t even see who you’re connected to,” Rin continues, reaching up to push his bangs back from his face. “Out of everyone in the world, the only soulmate you don’t know about is your own. I would hate that.”

“It’s fine,” Haruka says quickly, trying to convince himself.

“You really don’t care? Why not?”

_ Because the only one I’m interested in is you, _ his mind supplies unhelpfully.

“I’ve always known that I don’t have a soulmate. I don’t have a string, after all. There’s nothing I can do about it now.”

“You really believe that?” Rin asks, turning his attention on him. “You think you don’t have a soulmate because you don’t have a string?”

Haruka shrugs, hunching his shoulders. He doesn’t want to talk about this anymore--it hurts too much to remember that he’s destined to end up alone, while Rin will probably be swept away from him as soon as the rest of his string appears. (Or as soon as someone new strikes his fancy, since Haruka still doesn’t know what the half string means.)

“Well, I don’t,” Rin says. “You  _ have  _ to have a soulmate, Haru. There’s no way that you can’t.”

“You don’t know that,” Haruka murmurs to himself, looking to the side. There’s no way to tell if he does or doesn’t, so it’s much safer to assume that he doesn’t. There’s no point in getting his hopes up--besides, even if he  _ did _ have a soulmate, he wouldn’t be able to love them with so much of his heart already devoted to Rin. And it’s not like there’s a society of string-seers he can go and ask, either. He’d tried to look up red soulmate strings online and had only been met with sewing supply websites and porn.

“You’re right,” Rin says, eyes going soft. “But it doesn’t mean you can’t be happy. You’re a wonderful person, Haru. And soulmate or not, you’re going to make whoever you choose as happy as they can be.”

His words are surprisingly touching, earnest and sincere despite the light air Rin says them with. Haruka can’t help the small smile that crosses his face, not from the idea of ending up with someone, but from the fact that Rin thinks he  _ could _ . Of course, Rin doesn’t know how much Haruka wishes it was  _ him _ he could be with, but he decides that he doesn’t need to know that particular piece of information.

“Thank you,” he says, turning his attention back to the sunset once again. The barest sliver of sunlight emanates from beyond the water, which reflects the shine back into Haruka’s eyes.

“Of course,” Rin replies softly, gently. “What are friends for?”

* * *

“You know,” Makoto says as they walk home from school one day early into their third year. “For a while after Rin left, I really thought you would never swim again.”

Haruka blinks at him, confused. “What do you mean?” he asks, turning to frown into the ocean. “Of course I would.”

“It didn’t seem like it,” Makoto tells him softly, slowing down to match Haruka’s pace. “You were… in a really bad place, weren’t you?”

Haruka shrugs. He doesn’t know how to explain it to Makoto--the gut-wrenching emptiness he’d felt day after day after Rin had run from him, the pang of hurt and guilt and sorrow he’d experienced every time he so much as looked at a pool, the anger he’d directed towards himself for winning, towards Rin for leaving, and towards the world for taking away the only person he’d never had to hide around. It’s too much, too painful and sickening to be put into words.

“I knew something was wrong,” Makoto admits. “The day after you quit the swim club, I knew there had to be a reason. And I had my suspicions that Rin had something to do with it.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Haruka asks, turning to look up at Makoto. His friend smiles ahead of them, reaching out his left hand and splaying his fingers.

“I don’t really know,” he says at last. “I just know that I was really happy when you started swimming again. I finally got to swim with you, after so much time thinking that I wouldn’t. And I have a feeling that Rin had something to do with that, too. He was always the only one who could motivate you. You two really have something special.”

Haruka doesn’t reply, but the faint blush on his cheeks gives him away. Makoto chuckles, bringing a hand up to his mouth.

“I guess I should thank him for that,” he says, scratching at his chin. “We owe him a lot, don’t we?”

“…Yeah,” Haruka agrees, looking down at his own hand.  _ Something special, _ he thinks, the words repeating in his head. They feel right, fitting the nature of his relationship with Rin in a way that nothing else ever has before and setting a warm feeling glowing in his chest.

“Come on, Haru,” Makoto calls from a few feet ahead. (Haruka realizes that he’d stopped, hand extended in front of his face as he holds it up to the sky.) “Let’s get home.”

“Yeah,” Haruka says again, turning to follow.

* * *

Haruka’s under a lot of stress.

He’s a third year now, which means he has to start thinking about college, and his future, what he’ll do with his life after he graduates high school. It seems that everywhere he goes, people are just waiting to ask him what his plans are come next year, and he has no idea what to say in response.

Even Rin, who usually provides solace from Haruka’s problems when he needs it, is too much of a pressuring presence to be around. He’s closer to his goals than ever, and while Haruka is happy for him, he’s also incredibly aware of the distance that grows between them with every day that goes by. Rin knows what he wants. He’s always known what he wants. He wants to be a gold medalist in the Olympics, and to find his soulmate and share his dream with them.

Haruka doesn’t have any of that. All he has is a gift that’s more of a curse than anything else, and a future as wide-open as the ocean itself.

* * *

“Australia?” Haruka repeats, for the second time in his life. “Are you serious?”

Rin grins, pulling his hat further down on his head. “Absolutely. It’s exactly what you need!”

_ How? _ Haruka wants to ask, but he manages to refrain. Lately he hasn’t been at all sure what he needs, and if Rin wants to help him out, he’s not complaining--even if his version of helping is dragging Haruka halfway across the world. Maybe it’ll make more sense once he’s fully awake.

“Get packed,” Rin says, pushing his way into Haruka’s house. “We leave in a few hours.”

* * *

Haruka doesn’t really know what he’s doing here.

Even after the hours long airplane ride (which Rin passes sleeping on Haruka’s shoulder and Haruka passes fighting a blush), not to mention all the time they spent going through customs, (Haruka stumbling through with poorly constructed English sentences before Rin swoops in and saves him), he still doesn’t know why Rin bothered to bring him to Australia, of all places.

“Hey!” he calls as Rin speeds ahead, the sound of his footsteps getting lost in the hubbub of the airport. “Just where do you plan on taking me?”

“You’ll find out if you follow me,” Rin replies casually, glancing back over his shoulder. “Hurry up, Haru. That’s our bus over there.”

“Wait- Hold on!”

Haruka jogs the few feet between them, frowning at Rin’s back as he climbs onto the bus. He’s tired from the flight, his neck has a crick in it, and he’s confused and a little daunted at the thought of being in a whole new place he knows nothing about on such short notice, so he figures he has a right to be angry.

But then Rin turns back and smiles at him, all sharp teeth and glinting eyes, and all of Haruka’s annoyance melts away. Rin knows what he’s doing. And despite his trepidation, Haruka trusts him.

The bus ride is short compared to the flight. Rin signals for the driver to stop, leading Haruka off the bus and turning to the left, clearly having a destination in mind. They stop to rest a dozen or so blocks away, resting against a water fountain in the middle of a little park. Rin sighs as he sets his backpack down on the ground, stretching his arms out wide and rolling his neck.

“I always forget how cramped airplanes are,” he complains with a yawn. “They seemed so much bigger when I was a kid.”

“That’s because you were so much smaller,” Haruka points out flatly, turning to stare at the water. The sunlight glints off the surface prettily, casting strange shadows on the stone bottom of the fountain and the dirt ground and reminding him of the Iwatobi pool back home during the summer.

When he turns back around, Rin is gone.

Haruka blinks a few times, turning to look this way and that. Rin’s bag is still on the ground where he’d first set it down, but he’s nowhere to be seen.

“Rin?” Haruka calls softly, his voice swallowed by the wind. “Hey, Rin!” he tries again, a little more panicked this time.

_ Where did he go? _ he wonders, his heart starting to beat faster as he stands up to get a better look around. Rin wouldn’t have just left him here, obviously. If he’d wanted to go to Australia by himself, he wouldn’t have dragged Haruka out of his house so early in the morning. Maybe he saw an old friend across the park, or maybe he’s going back to find something he dropped earlier. Whatever the reason, he’s sure to be back any second, right?

“Haru, over here.”

Haruka spins around, breathing a sigh of relief as he sees Rin approaching a few feet away, two bottles in hand. “I got us some drinks,” Rin says, glancing down. “Is something wrong?”

“Don’t just run off like that,” Haruka breathes, his shoulders relaxing. “You scared me.”

At the very least, Rin has the sense to look abashed. “Sorry,” he says, staring down at the water bottles in his hand. He takes a seat next to Haruka and sets them between their legs, reaching up to take off the cap on his head.

“I’m sorry for what I said at the tournament, too,” he adds, still not meeting Haruka’s eyes. “About the scouts watching and how it impacts your future. I ignored how you felt and forced my own feelings onto you, even though I knew how much pressure you were under already.”

Haruka flinches, remembering Rin’s words from right after the 100 meter free at Regionals. He’d been so angry with him, accusing him of wasting his future and not taking anything seriously. Haruka hadn’t seen him that angry since the day under the old tree right before the relay the year before.

(He’d been terrified, when Rin had started yelling. Terrified that he’d lose Rin again, that his friend would give up on him and leave him behind for better people with solid dreams and bright futures. But Rin hadn’t. Of course he hadn’t.)

“I’m sorry,” Rin continues, lowering his head. “I know what I did was wrong. But no matter what I say, I want you to know that I’ve always… admired you.”

Haruka inhales sharply, surprised at Rin’s blatantness. He’s never known Rin to be so straightforward, especially after his time training abroad in Australia. He feels his cheeks heat up at the compliment and resists the urge to turn away and hide his face.

“Well, I feel better now that I’ve said that,” Rin sighs, a look of relief crossing his face. He stands, stretches once again, and holds a hand out to Haruka. “Come on, Haru. We should probably get going.”

“Yeah,” Haruka says with a nod, accepting the offered hand. “Where are we going, anyway?”

Rin smiles gently, and it almost seems like he’s reluctant to pull away. “You don’t have to look so worried,” he says with a soft laugh. “I brought you here for a reason, you know? There’s something here that you absolutely have to see.”

Haruka stares at him blankly, raising an eyebrow. Rin waves him off with another laugh, a smile stuck on his face. “Well, we’ll get to that later. There’s somewhere else we need to go, first.”

* * *

“It’s calming, isn’t it?” Rin says from his place next to Haruka. They’re sitting on the beach, watching the ocean go in and out as it laps at the shore, leaving the sand soft and dense beneath it. “I used to come here all the time back when I was a little kid. It helped me relax.”

“Really?” Haruka asks, curious. Rin had never mentioned anything about being nervous about Australia before.

“Yeah,” Rin admits, staring into the ocean distantly. “I talked a big talk back in Iwatobi, but honestly, I was terrified the first time I arrived. I missed my mom and my sister, and the swim club, and all of my friends. The language barrier was so high, and I didn’t know anyone, and it wasn’t at all like I’d been expecting.”

He pauses, tilting his head back and closing his eyes, letting the sun shine on his face. His hair blows gently in the breeze, loose and free. “But when I came here and saw the ocean, I felt calmer. Because I knew that you were on the other side, waiting for me to come back. I felt… I don’t know. I felt connected to you guys again, as soon as I touched the water.”

Haruka can’t help but smile, imagining a young Rin leaning down to touch the waves pulling at the beach, and him doing the same on the other side of the world. The word  _ connected _ echoes in his head, and once again, he wonders why anyone would even need a soulmate with a link as strong as theirs.

He looks at Rin’s faded string, then his own half strand, and for a second imagines a world where there are no strings at all. How different would their lives be, he wonders, if he was born giftless, the same as everybody else?

* * *

They’re on their way to the hotel Rin had booked after visiting his host parents, Russel and Lori, when he pulls Haruka into an old, abandoned bookstore off one of the main streets.

“This was one of my  _ favorite  _ places to go as a kid,” he explains, linking arms with Haruka and steering him towards the door. (Haruka tries not to dwell on what coupley things they’ve been doing, meeting the foster parents and visiting bookstores together like it’s no big deal.) “They’ve got a pretty nice selection of foreign books, so I used to come and read in the Japanese section when I got homesick.”

Haruka looks up at the old, wooden sign hanging above the door. There’s something written in English there, but though he recognizes the letters, he doesn’t understand the name. He can, however, read the sign with the opening and closing times written on it. There’s still a good half an hour left before they close for the night.

“I wonder if the owner will recognize me,” Rin says, pulling the door open and standing back so Haruka can step inside first. It’s warm inside, and it smells like handmade paper and dust. It’s quiet, too, and there’s only one other customer inside.

Haruka looks around, taking in the shelves of books with different labels at the end of each one. There are a couple of chairs surrounding a few old tables in the corner, each one mismatched and yet fitting in with each other perfectly. 

He can imagine a young Rin, frustrated and homesick, finding comfort in the foreign books section and sitting down at one of the small tables to read for hours on end, until the sun begins to set and the day fades to night.

Haruka wanders through a couple of aisles with Japanese books, picking one up with interest every now and then, but soon enough he finds himself wandering into the English sections. He’s never really been much of a reader, preferring to spend his time surrounded by water than immersed in the pages of a novel, so he’s not exactly looking for a new read. But before he can move on to the next row of shelves, something catches his eye.

It’s a red-covered book, with gold lettering on the spine. The red is what draws his attention at first--it’s an almost identical match to the ones hanging from the fingers of everyone in the room--but his attention is soon grabbed by the familiar arrangement of English letters on the spine. He squints at the text, spelling the words out in his head to make sure that he isn’t misreading them, but even with his limited English skill, he knows that he’d recognize those words anywhere.

_ The Red Stringsre _ the spine reads, the gold letters glowing almost ethereally.  _ By Hashimoto Akane. _

Before he knows what he’s doing, he’s reaching out to remove the book from the shelf, his eyes scanning the back of the dust jacket quickly. He can’t understand most of what it says, aside from the occasional repetition of  _ red string _ laced through the summary and the occasional  _ soulmates _ accompanying it. If he hadn’t been convinced that  _ the red string _ was referring to the same strings he sees every day, he definitely is now.

Despite the significant language barrier, he feels a compelling, urgent need to buy the book--it’s the first time someone other than Rin has acknowledged the strings in his whole life. Maybe it’s just lore, or a fictional story, but whatever it is, it’s bound to have answers to at least  _ some _ of the questions he’s been pondering since the strings first started appearing when he was three. It’s the only thing he’s ever laid eyes on that could even possibly tell him more about the strings than he could find out on his own.

He reaches into his pocket for the few Australian bills he’d converted earlier that day, reading the numbers on the price tag of the book and mentally adding up the money he has left to make sure it’s enough. Sure, he’d originally been intending to buy something nice for Makoto, which would hopefully help them smooth over the fight they’d had right before he left, but he can always get him something when they go back to Japan. Right now, the book is more important.

He glances over his shoulder, catching sight of Rin flipping through the pages of an English romance novel, then turns towards the back of the store.

“Hello!” the lady at the register greets him as he approaches, a warm smile crossing her face. Her eyes widen slightly as they land on the cover of the book, but her surprise is gone in an instant, replaced with careful neutrality. She says something else in English, but Haruka can’t understand her. He shakes his head, his mind blanking as he tries to come up with an English sentence that actually makes sense, but before he can grasp it, the lady continues.

“Is this better?” she asks, her Japanese natural and fluent despite her slight accent. Haruka stares, surprised, then nods his head  _ yes _ .

“Thank you,” he says in poor English, dipping his head respectfully. The woman waves his thanks off with another smile.

“Don’t worry about it, dear,” she says. “My mother was Japanese, and my dad was Australian, so I’ve got both languages under my belt.”

“I see,” Haruka says, trying to sound friendly. The lady nods, reaching over to slide the book over the counter. She frowns as she sees the cover of the book yet again, then glances back up at Haruka..

“I don’t mean to be rude,” she starts, “but would you prefer a Japanese copy? I think I have one in the back.”

“You do?” Haruka repeats, surprised once again. There was only one copy of  _ The Red Strings _ on the shelf, battered and dog-eared with a fine layer of dust atop it, so he’d figured that it wasn’t popular enough to have been translated yet. Then again, the author’s name is a Japanese one, so maybe it was translated the other way around.

“I can go get it, if you’d like,” the lady offers, tilting her head in the direction of the back room. “It will only be a second.”

“Please,” Haruka says with a nodsl. The lady disappears for a couple of seconds, only to pop back up a minute later with a second copy of  _ The Red Strings _ in her hand.

“Here you are!” she says merrily, accepting the money Haruka holds out to her in exchange for the book. Haruka catches sight of her string as she moves, trailing across the counter and back into the room she’d emerged from. He wonders if she’s already found her soulmate, if they’re here in the store, but before he can ponder it any further, his question is answered.

A tall, gray-haired man emerges, reaching up to wrap an arm around the lady. Sure enough, their strings connect seamlessly, only a meter or so between them as he squeezes her to his side.

“Ah, Mr. Lee!” Rin calls in English, his attention drawn away from the romance novel. Haruka hears footsteps approaching and hides his new book under his arm as subtly as he can. There’s no point in getting Rin’s hopes up before they know for sure that the book can give them answers. (Well, answers to the questions Rin is bound to have. Haruka is sure that he’ll get  _ some _ type of information, no matter the content type of the book.)

“Is that you, kid?” Lee asks, his face lighting up. “You’ve gotten so big! I barely recognized you!”

“I know!” Rin agrees, smiling as he looks between Lee and his soulmate, then over to Haruka. “Haru, this is Lee-san. He’s the owner I was talking about before.”

“Nice to meet you,” Haruka says, his English stilted. Lee smiles at him warmly, then turns to walk out in front of the counter to talk to Rin. Their English is too fast for Haruka to understand, but he finds himself smiling anyway as Rin talks and laughs and smiles like a little kid. Nowadays he hardly gets to see Rin smile, what with the stress of the future coming up so quickly, so it’s nice to watch him light up like this again.

“You two make a lovely couple,” Lee’s soulmate says in Japanese, breaking Haruka out of his thoughts. He turns and blinks at her once, twice, a third time, trying to process her words.

“We’re not…” he starts quietly, unsure of what to say. Correcting the lady feels rude, but he doesn’t want to let people think that they’re a couple and make Rin uncomfortable. No matter how much he wishes it were true, he knows he can’t just let people assume. Not since they’ve just started to recover after their big fight after regionals, and  _ especially  _ not since Rin has a soulmate already.

“Oh, you’re not?” the lady repeats, a confused frown on her face. For a second Haruka swears he sees her eyes dart down to his hand, but it’s too quick to tell for sure. “I’m sorry, I just thought…”

“It’s fine,” he says, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice. After all, it’s not her fault that Rin isn’t fated to be with him. If the look on the lady’s face is anything to go by, he isn’t very successful.

She shoots him a sympathetic smile, placing a hand over his on the counter. “It’ll happen with time,” she assures him, giving his hand a gentle squeeze. “I’m sure of it.”

Once again, her eyes drop down to where his pinky lays against the counter, then slowly follows some invisible line across the counter, to where Rin is standing with his back to the two of them. For a second Haruka’s heart stops in his chest at the thought that maybe,  _ maybe _ she sees something there that he can’t.

He shakes the thought from his head almost as soon as it pops up. There’s no way that a random cashier at a convenience store in a town by the sea could possibly have the same “gift” that he does. And even if she does, there’s nothing there to see. He doesn’t  _ have _ a string.

“Sorry for the trouble,” the lady says apologetically.

“It’s fine,” Haruka says, reaching up to adjust the book under his arm. “Thank you for your help…”

“Aka,” the lady supplies with a wink. “You can call me Aka.”

* * *

Haruka hides  _ The Red Strings _ in his backpack as soon as they leave the store.

Rin shoots him a questioning look, but doesn’t bother asking him what he’d bought. For that he’s extremely thankful. He’s not sure what the book contains, but whatever it is, it feels like something he should read for himself. So he doesn’t mention his new purchase or the strange encounter with Aka at all, choosing instead to let Rin ramble about how much has changed since he’d last gone to the bookstore and how happy he is that Lee had recognized him as they make their way towards the hotel.

Getting their room proves to be a whole ordeal.

Rin does most of the paperwork for Haruka, only leaving the signature areas blank so he can sign them himself. Once that’s done, the receptionist hands over the key, attached to a small butterfly keychain that reminds him of the charms they’d gotten on their first day at the swim club. (He distinctly remembers Rin choosing a shiny red shark with black bead eyes, although he hasn’t seen it hanging from Rin’s bag in years.)

They climb the stairs to room twenty-four, Rin in the lead. He tosses the key up and down as he moves, his string bouncing along behind him like the tail on a puppy. With a quick turn of his wrist, he unlocks the door and trudges inside, already shrugging off his backpack.

Haruka starts to follow him, but before he can even make it into the room, he’s bumping into Rin’s back and stumbling against the door.

“What the hell?” Rin exclaims, a touch of anger seeping into his voice. “What are they playing at?”

“What’s going on?” Haruka asks, reaching back to steady himself. He glances over Rin’s shoulder and scans the hotel room, taking in a small dresser and a little window, a couple of lamps, some chairs, and a single, small bed in the center of the-

Oh.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Rin growls, his face pulled down into a scowl.

“Is this… normal in Australia?” Haruka wonders aloud, taking a step next to him.

“ _ No _ it’s not  _ normal _ ,” Rin snaps, then sighs again. “It’s probably your fault, Haru. You and your girly name.”

“What? Then maybe it’s your fault,” Haruka retorts, unwilling to go down for a crime he didn’t commit. “If anything, your name’s the more feminine one.”

“No way!” Rin protests with a glare. “It’s your fault.”

“Your fault,” Haruka says flatly.

“Your- Ugh, now’s not the time!” Rin grabs his backpack off the ground and turns back towards the lobby. “Stay here. I’m gonna go see what they’re gonna do about this.”

Haruka nods, slinging his own backpack off his shoulders and steps further into the room as he reaches inside, pulling out his new copy of  _ The Red Strings _ . His curiosity’s been burning at the back of his mind ever since he’d left the bookstore, and despite wanting to keep Rin in the dark for just a  _ bit _ longer, waiting to get the answers he so desperately needs will drive him crazy.

The book is thin, only a hundred or so pages from the looks of it. The gold on the spine glints prettily in the light from the ceiling lamp as he opens the front cover, skipping past the dedications and the publication information in favor of scanning over the introduction paragraphs.

_ From about the age of five, _ the book starts,  _ I’ve been able to see the red string of fate as it connects two people destined to be together. The red string of fate manifests itself as a long red thread tied to the left pinky finger of one’s true love. As soon as I was old enough to realize what the strings were and what their connections meant, I started compiling data on them. I wanted to learn as much from them as I could, and after nearly twenty-five years, I’ve finally compiled the results of my observations. Here are the basics: _

_ The red string of fate connects two or more people who are destined to find each other and fall in love. These connections do not change. However, people can fall in love outside of the connections, either before meeting their soulmate or after their soulmate passes. _

Haruka nods along almost subconsciously. He’d known most of that already, so the extra information doesn’t come as a surprise. (His mind jumps back to the parents at the swim club whose strings had led in two separate directions, and he finds relief in the fact that they might not have been totally miserable.) Curiously, he moves onto the next paragraph.

_ The strings cannot be touched by hand, but they follow the basic laws of physics--they won’t fall through the floor into the center of the earth, but rather rest above the ground like a normal string would. I have yet to figure out why, though I have noticed that they don’t always touch the ground. When two soulmates are in close proximity with each other, the strings may lift off the ground as if stretched too quickly. _

Huh. He’s never thought about why the strings don’t fall through the ground before, although he has wondered why he can’t touch them.

_ The strings cannot change. One has a string from the moment they are born until the moment they die. If their soulmate is dead or not born yet, their string will connect to the heart of the mother or the remains of their soulmate. This theory isn’t a hundred percent proven yet. _

So Rin’s soulmate can’t be dead. Haruka doesn’t know whether or not he should be happy about that. Of course, Rin will be happy to know that his soulmate is okay--Haruka knows he worries about them, sees it in the way he looks at his hand every so often when he thinks no one’s watching. But it also means that Haruka truly is the only one without a soulmate--that is, until he catches sight of the next sentence.

_ Everybody has a string _ , the book tells him, as if reading his thoughts. _ No matter if one doesn’t experience sexual or romantic attraction, or if one seems or feels incapable of love. The strings are all-knowing and will find the perfect soulmate for everyone, regardless of the nature of the relationship (although it’s usually romantic). _

_ That last rule was the hardest for me to accept, seeing as I was born without a string. At least, that’s what I thought. But then I met my husband, and everything changed. Because out of everyone in the world, my husband--my  _ soulmate-- _ was the only one I’d ever met who had only part of a string. _

Haruka’s heart stops.

The book falls to the floor.

All of the thoughts, of Rin’s soulmate and his lack of a string and  _ everything _ fly out of his head.

And at the same time, Rin opens the door.

“Well, they can’t do anything about the room,” he sighs, dragging a hand down his face. “I guess we’ll just have to share, so you’d better not kick in your sleep.”

Haruka doesn’t respond, his tongue glued to the roof of his mouth. His eyes are blown wide, and he can hardly hear Rin’s voice over the sound of his beating heart pounding in his chest and blood roaring in his ears. His hands shake, stuck in place from when the book had slipped through his fingers, and he feels intensely dizzy all of a sudden.

“Haru?”

Rin steps in front of him, not noticing the book lying on the ground between his feet as he does. “What’s wrong?” he asks, crouching down and looking Haruka in the eye. Haruka’s gaze dips down to his string, but he can’t bring himself to look at it for more than a second. It hurts too much, too much to know that Rin is really, truly  _ his _ , and that he’s Rin’s, and that it’s taken over five years for him to figure out what, quite honestly, should have been obvious from the start.

He can’t see the end of Rin’s string, and he can’t see his own. The pieces fit together seamlessly, like a puzzle he’s just now figuring out after years upon years of trying.

_ Rin is my soulmate _ .

“Hey, Haru!” Rin calls, his eyebrows drawing together in concern. “Are you okay? You should sit down if you aren’t feeling well.”

He pushes at Haruka’s shoulders gently until he complies, sinking down onto the bed and taking a few deep, steadying breaths. He needs to think. He needs to decide what he’s going to do next, how he’s going to tell Rin--

_ If _ he’s going to tell Rin.

Because right now, he’s being torn in two directions, pulled apart at the seams. One side of him wants to rejoice, wants to throw his arms around Rin and kiss him senseless and tell him he loves him, he’s always loved him, from the moment they’d met. But the other side is doubt-filled, anxious and afraid. Afraid of what will happen when he tells Rin the truth, that he’s been by Rin’s side for all this time and hasn’t been smart enough to figure it out until now. Afraid that, even with the unshakable proof of the strings tying them together, Rin will still reject him.

More than anything, he’s afraid of losing Rin again.

“I’ll go get you some water,” Rin says, concern still written all over his face as he jumps up and heads for the bathroom. He returns a moment later, a paper cup full of tap water clutched in his hands as he thrusts it at Haruka.

“Thank you,” Haruka manages, accepting the cup. His hands are still shaking, and his voice is hoarse and strained.

“What’s going on?” Rin asks again as he drains the cup. “Are you feeling sick? I can run out and get some medicine for you.”

“I’m fine,” Haruka deflects, looking away on instinct. Having Rin mother hen over him would have been nice a day ago, but now it’s starting to make him feel sick. Because Rin probably wouldn’t be acting like this if he found out that Haruka is his soulmate. He probably wouldn’t be here at all if he knew.

Haruka knows he should tell him. But he needs to make sure their connection is real before he does.

As he looks away, his eyes fall on the book, laying on the ground with the back cover flipped wide open.

He blinks in surprise.

Above the  _ about the author _ section, there’s a photo of the woman--Hashimoto Akane, if he remembers correctly. And though she’s significantly younger, her hair a deeper brown and her face smoother and brighter, it’s still unmistakable in his eyes.

_ How lucky, _ he thinks to himself.  _ I know just where to go to get the answers I need. _

* * *

“You sure you dropped it here?” Rin asks the next day, looking around the area outside of the bookstore skeptically. “It’s probably long gone by now, Haru.”

“I’ll check inside,” Haruka replies, glancing through the glass door in the direction of the counter. He can’t see anyone at the register, but he has his fingers crossed that Aka will be around. This could be his last chance to confirm the truth.

“Want me to come?” Rin offers. “Maybe Lee-san saw it somewhere. I could translate for you.”

“That’s alright,” Haruka says with a shake of his head, mentally praying that Rin doesn’t insist on following him. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

With that, he turns his back on his soulmate (or, the one who he  _ thinks _ is his soulmate) and pulls the door to the bookstore open.

The bell above the door jingles merrily as he steps inside, beelining it towards the back of the store where the counter stands. He takes the book out of his backpack as he waits for somebody to come out from the back room.

A moment later, Lee walks out, his eyebrows shooting up in surprise as he catches sight of Haruka. “Weren’t you here with Rin yesterday?” he asks in English, looking around the store as if he might catch sight of Rin amongst the shelves.

Haruka struggles to find the right words, but all of his English vocabulary has flown out of his head yet again. “I-” he starts, but nothing else comes out.

“Can I help you, son?” Lee asks with a frown. Haruka frowns back, taking a deep breath before holding up his pinky finger, hoping that he’ll understand.

“I can… speak with… Ms. Aka?” he tries in a last ditch attempt to communicate verbally. Lee’s eyes widen as he glances from the copy of  _ The Red Strings _ on the table to the finger Haruka has raised.  _ He understands, _ Haruka thinks, letting his shoulders relax.

“Uh… sure,” Lee says at last, turning towards the back room and yelling something in English. A couple of seconds later, Aka pokes her head out, then trots over to him, leaving Lee to retreat back to where he came from.

“Rin’s friend, right?” she asks in Japanese. “What brings you back here so soon?”

“I needed to talk to you,” Haruka blurts, flipping through the pages of  _ The Red Strings  _ until he finds her picture. “This is you, right?”

Aka’s eyes widen. She looks between him and the picture a couple of times before nodding in admittance.

“Yes, that’s me,” she confirms. “How come?”

“You can see the strings, can’t you?” Haruka continues, shutting the book and bracing his hands against the counter. “I can see them, too.”

Aka looks surprised, but her face softens into a smile as she takes him in. “I thought that might have been the case,” she says with a sigh. “Nobody else would have shown an interest in my book. The world isn’t ready to know about the strings yet, I suppose.”

“I-” Haruka starts, then cuts himself off once again. “My friend,” he says instead. “Rin. The redhead. I can’t see the other half of his string.”

“Oh?”

“And I- I can’t see mine, either,” he continues. “I didn’t think I had one. But your book--in the introduction, it said that…”

“That everyone has a string,” Aka finishes for him, a knowing look on her face. “I’m not wrong, you know. There’s not a single person on this Earth that isn’t attached to someone else.”

“But I can’t see-”

“I know.” Aka’s smile turns sad as she stares down at her own hand, her fingers splayed against the wood of the counter. “I thought the same thing that you did for years of my life. I couldn’t see my string, so I assumed it didn’t exist. It wasn’t until I met my husband and saw his string that I finally realized that it was there the whole time.”

“Does that mean that I…?” Haruka asks, a hint of desperation in his voice. “I really have a string?”

“Yes,” Aka tells him. “You do. I can see it for myself.”

“And does that mean that Rin… That Rin and I…” Haruka trails off yet again, glancing over his shoulder to make sure nobody is listening. “Are we… soulmates?” he finishes in a whisper.

“Oh, dear,” Aka sighs, shaking her head. “You really didn’t know?”

It’s as much of a confirmation as Haruka needs.

He stares down at his own hand, at his bare pinky finger that suddenly doesn’t feel as cold and empty as it usually does. There’s a string there, he knows now, one that he just can’t see. And it links him to Rin.

Rin, his friend. His love. His soulmate. The one Haruka had given up hope of ever loving him back, the one he’d deemed more important than any soulmate ever could be only to find out that they’ve been tied together by the strings the entire time. The one waiting out there for him, in the chilly morning air, just because Haruka had made up some stupid lie about leaving his favorite keychain somewhere around here.

“What do I tell him?” he whispers, almost to himself. Aka hears him, however, and places her hand over his, giving it a gentle squeeze yet again.

“You tell him the truth,” she says quietly, a soft smile on her face. “Don’t worry about how he’ll react. You two are soulmates. He’ll come around sooner or later.”

Haruka wants to agree, wants to tell her that he believes her, that she’s right. But the doubt-filled, uneasy side of him is terrified of what will happen if he  _ does _ tell Rin the truth. Will he hate him? Will he never want to speak to him again?

“Thank you,” Haruka says with a dip of his head, turning back towards the door. He needs time to think before he makes a final decision on whether to tell Rin or not, and how to tell him if he does decide to.

Rin is standing with his back to the store when he comes out, his hair blowing gently in the breeze. His string is stretched backwards, towards Haruka, and it sends a shiver up his spine to see. He wonders how he’d never noticed it before, that Rin’s string always seems to be pointed towards him.

It all makes sense now. The undeniable, unwavering love he feels for Rin, stronger than anything he’s ever felt before. The pain he’d felt whenever Rin turned his back on him, when he’d run away, when he’d left Haruka in the dust. The light he only ever sees when they swim together, when they’re moving through the water at the same time, neck and neck, until their hands slam against the pool wall together.

The light that he now realizes comes not from the water, but from Rin.

“Ah, Haru.”

He looks up, making eye contact with his  _ soulmate _ as he turns around to meet him. A chill runs down his spine as he takes Rin in, drinks in the sight of the one person who matters, the one who he cares about, the one who’s caused him so much pain over the last few years, only for it to come to this. “I’m ready to go,” he says quietly, tearing his eyes away and walking past Rin. He needs time to think. He can’t let Rin know just yet. 

* * *

In his dream, he’s back on the beach.

“Remember our promise?” Rin says in the soft, personal voice from before. Once again, he holds his pinky finger in the air for Haruka to see.

“Our promise?” Haruka says again, doubt flickering in his eyes. “About staying the same after you left?”

“No, Haru,” Rin says, shaking his head and letting out a light, airy laugh. “You said you’d tell me if you ever found my soulmate. You promised.”

He curls his pinky finger invitingly, and on instinct, Haruka raises his own. That’s when he sees it--the small circle of red tied neatly around his finger, dropping a couple of centimeters to the sand before looping back up to wrap around Rin’s.

“Oh,” Haruka says, watching the strings sway back and forth in the air. His heart beats quickly in his chest, and it’s almost as if he can feel Rin’s heart beating along with it. As he fixates on the strings--the  _ string _ \--Rin leans in closer and closer, until he can feel his breath on his cheek. Once again they’re only centimeters apart, lips practically brushing, eyes fluttering shut as Rin closes the distance between them.

He wakes with tears on his face and an aching, hollow-feeling heart. Because he  _ does _ remember their promise, all the way from back when they were kids. He remembers the edge of desperation, of loneliness in Rin’s voice as he’d asked Haruka if he’d found his soulmate yet that day on the beach. He remembers their conversation as they’d watched the sun set behind the ocean, Rin asking him if he’d tell him about the pairs that he knows.

_ I have to tell him, _ he thinks, reaching up to wipe tears from his face. As he moves he catches sight of Rin, illuminated softly by the light from the window. His arm is thrown out from under the covers, his string trailing across the blankets and fading out an inch away from Haruka’s.

Carefully, he moves his hand to rest next to Rin’s, until his hand is lying right next to Rin’s string. He edges closer little by little until his pinky brushes against Rin’s, then tangles their fingers together.

_ After we get back, _ he decides, closing his eyes and letting his head loll against the pillow.  _ I’ll tell you after we get back, Rin. I’ll keep my promise. _

* * *

If Rin notices that he’s extra quiet for the rest of the trip, he doesn’t say anything. He sends him the occasional strange, concerned look, but he doesn’t ask him what’s wrong any more than he already has. Haruka figures he just thinks that he’s still not feeling well, after the episode he’d had two nights ago.

The flight back home is uneventful, too. Rin falls asleep again, his head tipped towards the window this time, instead of on Haruka’s shoulder. Haruka spends most of the trip reading  _ The Red Strings _ and thinking about Aka and her husband and him and Rin. The look of recognition that had crossed Aka’s face when she’d seen the book makes more sense now, as does the fact that she’d had a copy in Japanese as well as one in English. (She probably translated it herself, he thinks.) Her name seems to be a bit too spot-on to be a coincidence when he looks at the characters, so he figures Hashimoto Akane must be a pen name of some sort.

He wonders how long it had taken her to figure out that Lee was her soulmate. Had she known right away? Or had she spent days, weeks, maybe even years figuring it out? Surely it couldn’t have taken as long as it has with them, Haruka thinks. Five years to figure out that he’s in love with Rin, and an extra one before he learned that they’re soulmates. For once he wishes he weren’t so socially inept; maybe then it wouldn’t have taken as long as it did.

He doesn’t learn much else of importance from the book, though it is interesting. Some parts of it detail specific stories of two people in Aka’s life falling in love, while others talk about her discoveries regarding the strings’ logistics. Her soulmate isn’t mentioned again until chapter six, where she finally talks about her own experiences with the strings, and by the time Haruka is halfway finished with the chapter, they’ve already touched ground.

Rin stirs next to him, cracking an eye open and blinking blearily as he stares out the window, then turning his attention on Haruka. His mouth curves up in a soft smile, and Haruka has to bite back the urge to reach over and fix the few strands of hair that have fallen in front of his face.

“We’re home,” he says, looking at the seat in front of him and trying to calm himself down. His imagination’s running wild with thoughts of waking up next to Rin every day, leaning over and kissing him good morning and running his fingers through his hair as they start their day together.

“Oh, good,” Rin says sleepily, yawning and doing his best to stretch in the cramped space. “My legs are killing me.”

They make their way out of the airplane, grabbing their carry ons from the compartments above the seats before heading into the tunnel. Rin walks beside Haruka this time, instead of barreling on ahead. It’s nice to return home together for once, but it brings with it a sense of dread, as if he can feel that something terrible is going to happen.

“Makoto texted me,” Rin admits as they make their way through customs once again. “He’s waiting for us here. Will you be okay to see him?”

“…Yeah,” Haruka says after a pause, nodding. Sure, it had been their first fight since they were little kids, but right now it’s the least of his worries. He can’t be mad at Makoto for having plans for the future, especially with the whole Rin-is-my-soulmate thing weighing on his mind, a much bigger and scarier presence than any of the other doubts and fears in his mind.

“You sure?” Rin asks as the line moves forward, nudging Haruka’s arm with his elbow. “You seem off. I can tell him you’re not ready, if that’s what you’re all sick over.”

“It’s fine,” Haruka says, shrinking away. He almost misses the flash of hurt that crosses Rin’s face for a split second, but his eyes pick up on it anyway.

“Alright,” Rin says with a sigh. “C’mon, it’s our turn next. You don’t even have to speak English this time.”

Haruka tries to laugh, but he doesn’t know if he can. His stomach turns over and over as it finally sinks in that they’re  _ home _ . He’s out of excuses now, and no matter how hard he tries to justify putting it off for longer, he knows he can’t do that without it weighing down on his conscience. There’s only one thing left to do.

He needs to tell Rin. As soon as the opportunity arises.

* * *

“Haru-chan, what’s wrong?” Nagisa asks, his voice laden with curiosity as he reaches over to poke Haruka in the cheek. His string wraps around his finger and trails along the floor of the roof, disappearing through the door where they’d come out from.

“Nothing,” Haruka says almost immediately, batting his hand away. “I’m just tired.”

It’s not a total lie. He  _ is _ tired, leftover jetlag from the trip to Australia coupled with the fact that he’d had to wake up early for school the next couple of days adding to the ever-growing headache behind yohis eyes. On the bright side, it’s finally Friday, which means he’ll be able to sleep as much as he wants the next morning.

On the dark side, that also means that he has to talk to Rin. Tonight.

“You could have stayed home,” Makoto points out softly, worriedly, taking a bite of rice from his bento. “I would have taken notes for you.”

Haruka sighs, shaking his head. “It’s fine,” he says, feeling bad for dismissing Makoto’s infinite kindness once again and at the same time not having enough energy to backtrack. “School’s halfway over,” he adds, shoving a bit of mackerel into his mouth. “I’ll survive.”

“Haru-chaaan,” Nagisa whines, his lip jutting out into a pout. “You’ve got to take care of yourself, you know! What would we do if our star swimmer got sick and died?”

“Haruka-senpai’s just tired from the trip, Nagisa-kun,” Rei points out, shooting Haruka an apologetic look. “Don’t bother him anymore, okay?”

“But he looks worried,” Nagisa says, pointing towards Haruka’s face once again. “See? This is his worried face.”

“I’m not worried,” Haruka says, despite the fact that he is  _ immensely _ worried. He’s glad his hands haven’t started shaking again, although thinking about it probably doesn’t help. His stomach keeps turning nervously, and whenever he thinks about Rin his heart starts to beat ever-so-quickly in his chest. (Even more so than usual.)

“Is it your future again?” Makoto asks, setting his lunch down. “You don’t have to decide yet, you know.”

“I know,” Haruka says, shaking his head. The future can wait until tomorrow. He has more important things to do right now.

“Haru,” Makoto says, lowering his voice ever so slightly, “is it Rin?”

Haruka turns to stare at him, surprised. “What?”

“I could tell something was off between you at the airport the other day,” Makoto admits sheepishly. “I thought you might have gotten into a fight, too. But when I asked Rin, he said the two of you worked everything out.”

_ Worked everything out? _ Haruka thinks skeptically.  _ If anything, things are even more complicated now than they were before. _

“You can tell me if something’s going on between you, you know,” Makoto says, his voice low.

“Going on between us?” Haruka repeats, frowning.

“I’m not blind, Haru.” Makoto smiles, turning towards the sky. “I’ve always known. You and Rin really do have something special.”

There those words are again;  _ something special _ . Haruka flashes back to when Makoto had said them to him the first time, on the walk home a couple of months prior. He wonders what Makoto means by  _ I’ve always known _ . Known about what? Not the fact that they’re soulmates, certainly. Is he talking about Haruka’s feelings for Rin?

“I don’t know exactly what happened,” Makoto continues gently, “but whatever it is, I’m sure it will work itself out. You don’t need to worry.”

“I’m not worried,” Haruka says once again, looking down and splaying his hand on the ground. For one brief, tiny little moment, he wonders if he should tell Makoto everything, the whole story from the moment the first string appeared on his mother’s finger to his discovery in Australia. Makoto would believe him, he thinks. He was gullible enough to believe Nagisa’s ghost story way back when they’d visited the old Iwatobi Swim Club building, after all. Maybe he could offer Haruka some advice, tell him what to say to Rin and how to say it and what to expect from him.

But he knows he can’t. Because as kind and gentle and understanding as Makoto is, he just wouldn’t  _ get _ it. And as much as Haruka wants to ask for his friend’s help, a small part of him wants to keep the secret between him and Rin. (And Aka, but he’s pretty sure he won’t be seeing her for a while, so she doesn’t count.) Besides, it wouldn’t be fair to tell Makoto that he knows who Rin’s soulmate is before he tells Rin. They  _ did _ have a promise, after all, and he intends to honor it to the best of his ability.

“Alright,” Makoto says, unconvinced, turning back to his lunch. “Just… Come to me if you need to talk, alright? About anything.”

Haruka nods, picking up his chopsticks and using them to pick up another piece of mackerel. He half-listens to Nagisa and Rei’s conversation and pretends he doesn’t notice Makoto giving him odd looks every few minutes, keeping his eyes fixed firmly in front of him. His lunchbox is only half empty by the time the others start to pack up, and yet he doesn’t feel hungry at all.

“Are you coming, Haru?” Makoto asks, pausing at the door to the roof. “Class is starting soon.”

“I’ll be there in a minute,” Haruka says, waiting for Makoto to duck back inside before he pulls out his phone. He’d actually bothered to charge it the night before, although he’d had to go through a week’s worth of texts and missed calls once it had woken up.

He pulls up a new message, giving his phone a few seconds to catch up before he starts to type in Rin’s number. The contact picture that Rin had insisted on taking a few days after the relay pops up onto his screen, smiling at him brightly, completely unaware of Haruka’s inner worry. He sighs, selecting the contact and starting to type out a message.

_ Are you free after school today? _

He waits with bated breath, his anxiety getting the better of him once again. Wouldn’t it be anticlimactic if Rin turns out to be busy? What would he do then?

To his surprise, a response comes within a minute of him sending the text.  _ I have practice, _ Rin writes,  _ and then Sousuke wants to get dinner, but I’m free after that. _

_ Can you catch a train to Iwatobi? _ Haruka asks, tapping the side of his phone nervously as he waits for another reply.

_ Sure, _ Rin says.  _ What for? _

_ I wanted to talk to you. _

There’s a pause in the conversation after that. Haruka glances at the time in the corner of his screen, wondering if Rin is going to text back or if he should give up and head inside. But before he can make up his mind, another message comes through.

_ Okay, Mr. Cryptic, _ Rin says, and Haruka can’t help but smile shakily. He can  _ hear _ Rin’s joking tone, even though they’re miles apart.

_ Can you come or not? _ he asks, hitting send before he can back out. There’s no going back now. Either Rin says  _ yes _ and they meet up after practice, or he says no and Haruka has to try again some other time.

_ Sure, _ Rin replies at last.  _ Looking forward to it. _

_ That makes one of us, _ Haruka thinks with a sigh, shutting his phone and turning to head back inside.

* * *

“Haru?”

Haruka turns, his breath catching in his throat as he takes in the sight before him, wondering how it’s possible that Rin gets more beautiful each time he sees him. Tonight he’s ethereal, bathed in the dim glow of the streetlamps and the almost-full moon above them. His hair is soft-looking and gently tousled by the wind, and he’s wearing one of his favored grayish shirts and a big black jacket, blending in with the quickly darkening night around them.

“Rin,” Haruka says, almost too quiet to hear. “You came.”

Part of him had been hoping that Rin wouldn’t show up in the end, giving him just a little bit more time before he has to face the truth, but he knows that this is for the best. He’s already put it off long enough, and if he keeps it a secret any longer, he knows it’ll end badly.

“Of course I did,” Rin says, a soft smile crossing his face. “I said I would, didn’t I?”

He takes the last few steps towards Haruka, stopping when there’s a meter of space between them. Haruka wants so badly to lean over and kiss him, but instead he settles for smiling back in a last-ditch attempt to savor what could quite possibly be the last time they’re able to be happy with each other. If things go wrong, Rin could spend another five years hating him. He could go back to Australia and leave Haruka behind in Iwatobi to mourn over his mistakes yet again.

“So?” Rin questions, interrupting his thoughts. “What did you want to talk about?”

“I…” Haruka starts, but his throat closes up before he can continue. He blinks, trying to force the words out, to just  _ get it over with, already _ , but he can’t manage to make himself speak.

“I?” Rin repeats, amused. “That’s good to know.”

“I’m-” Haruka snaps, “I’m thinking.”

“You had all day to think,yo” Rin teases lightly. “Surely your brain isn’t that waterlogged.”

“ _ Rin _ ,” Haruka grits out, his eyebrows drawing together slightly. “I’m  _ trying _ .”

The joking smile drops from Rin’s face. “Is it serious?” he asks, a familiar edge of concern in his voice. (The same voice he’d used when Haruka had first found out a week ago, soft and caring and everything he wants but doesn’t deserve.) “Is everything okay?”

“I don’t know,” Haruka admits, hating the way his voice shakes ever so slightly. He blinks a few times, lowering his gaze to the ground. He can’t do this. He can’t do this, but he  _ needs _ to do it, needs to tell Rin before any more time passes and things get even worse than they already are.

“Hey,” Rin says, taking a step forward until his feet come into Haruka’s field of vision. His hands reach out and take Haruka’s in between them, his string-- _ their _ string--drifting alongside his pinky. “Whatever it is, it’s going to be okay, alright? We can work through it.”

_ You wouldn’t be saying that if you knew the truth, _ Haruka thinks, watching as Rin’s thumbs rub circles into the backs of his hands.

“Take a deep breath,” Rin instructs him softly. “And when you’re ready, just come out and say it.”

_ Say it, _ Haruka tells himself, trying to follow Rin’s instructions.  _ You’re just delaying the inevitable! _

“Come on, Haru,” Rin says encouragingly. “You can do it.”

Haruka nods, slowly at first, then a little more surely.  _ Okay, _ he thinks,  _ okay. I can do this. I  _ have  _ to do this. _

“I…” he starts, looking up at Rin unsurely. “I found your… your soulmate.”

Rin’s hands freeze against his own.

“What?” he whispers, eyes wide. “My soulmate?”

Haruka nods, nervousness curling in the pit of his stomach. “It’s me,” he says, his voice shaking once again.

Rin doesn’t say anything. His eyes are unfocused, out of the moment, and he’s still frozen against Haruka’s hands. He looks pale, like he’s just seen a ghost, and his mouth hangs open very slightly. Haruka’s heart beats loudly in his chest with each passing second, and his breathing starts quickening as well.

“Rin?” he breathes, starting to panic. “Say something, Rin.”

The sound of his voice seems to snap him back to the present. In one ragged, jerky motion, he pulls his hands out of Haruka’s and takes a step back, wide-eyed.

“Are you mocking me?” he asks, anger bubbling to the surface of his voice. “This isn’t funny, Haru.”

“What?” Haruka asks, his blood running cold. “Rin, I-”

“So how’d you find out, huh?” Rin interrupts, a crease forming between his brows as his frown grows deeper and his shoulders start to tense. “Did Sousuke tell you? Or Nagisa? I knew that little idiot had me figured out, I  _ knew _ it!”

“Nobody told me anything!” Haruka exclaims, his temper getting the better of him for once. He doesn’t understand what Rin’s saying, and all he needs is for him to listen, why won’t he just  _ listen- _

“I bet you think this is funny,” Rin snaps, hands balling into fists at his sides. He’s starting to shake, anger coursing through him as he continues to spit accusations at Haruka. “You do, don’t you? You’re getting off on watching me get my hopes up, huh? Is it fun to mess with me, Haru? Are you having fun watching me suffer?”

“I’m not messing with you, Rin,” Haruka insists, leaning forward and splaying his hand against his chest. “I know how much this means to you. You know I wouldn’t do something like that to you!”

“Then what?” Rin growls. “You’re serious?”

Haruka nods, not trusting himself with words. The moment he opens his mouth, all of his feelings, all of the love he has for Rin will come spilling out, and that will drive him even further away. He takes a step closer and raises his left hand, curling his fingers inwards and extending his pinky to Rin.

“Believe me,” he chokes out, pleading.

Rin doesn’t come to meet him in the middle, doesn’t wrap his finger around Haruka’s. Instead he takes another step back, eyes wide and round with shock, hands coming up in front of him as if they can stop the truth from reaching him.

“No,” he gasps, harsh and cutting in the cool night air. “You’re serious, Haru? You are, aren’t you?”

Haruka doesn’t speak, paralyzed by fear. He can barely hear over the sound of his own heartbeat, like thunder to his ears. All he can do is watch as Rin brings a hand up to his chest, fingers clenching in the fabric of his shirt, as he lowers his head.

“After all this time,” he whispers, stumbling backwards unsteadily. “How long have you known?”

“Since Australia,” Haruka admits, matching his quiet tone. “The very first day.”

Rin’s head snaps up, his eyebrows drawing together once again. “How did you find out?” he demands, his hand squeezing so tight Haruka is afraid he’s going to rip a hole in his shirt.

“The lady at the bookstore-” he tries. “She could see them, too. She sold me a book about them- about the strings, and I-”

“And you waited this long to tell me?” Rin growls, eyes growing wide. “It’s been a week, Haru! What were you doing that was so important that you had to wait a whole week to tell me?!”

“I was-”  _ Terrified. Confused. Afraid. Upset. Still trying to wrap my head around it. _ He doesn’t know which one to say, which one will calm Rin down, make him stop and listen.

“You were what?” Rin challenges, mouth set into a hard, thin line. “What is it, Haru? The most important thing in the world and you waited to tell me because of  _ what _ ?”

“I was scared!” Haruka yells back, surprising them both. “I didn’t… I didn’t want you to hate me. I didn’t want you to leave me again!”

“What?” Rin half-asks, half-snarls. “Is that what you think of me? I’m the type of guy to up and leave my- my-”

_ Soulmate _ , Haruka thinks.

“-You?” Rin finishes. “You really think I’d leave you again, over something like this? I thought you knew me better than that!”

“But you-” Haruka tries, eyes wide, eyebrows slanted upwards. “I thought you’d be disappointed. Your string-”

“ _ I didn’t care about my string! _ ” Rin yells, his eyes flashing in the dim moonlight. “All I ever cared about was you, Haru! And do you know what that did to me? Do you know what I thought of myself because of it?”

His tone is raw, open, full of emotions that Haruka can’t even begin to name. Anger, definitely, and something close to desperation. All of a sudden they’re back under the tree, minutes before regionals, and Rin is breaking his heart with every word he yells, with every tear that falls, with every move he makes.

“I spent six years  _ hating myself _ for loving you!” Rin cries, throwing his arms outwards at his sides. “ _ Six years  _ of telling myself that I wasn’t allowed to feel this way, that I was betraying my soulmate every time I so much as thought about you!”

His words are like knives, like bullets, each one tearing a new hole in Haruka’s heart. His string lashes back and forth as he moves, forever trailing off in Haruka’s direction no matter how far apart they might be.

“And I tried not to care about you, I  _ tried _ to focus on my soulmate instead of you the  _ moment _ I realized I loved you! But I couldn’t! You were  _ everywhere _ , even when I went to Australia and I couldn’t see you anymore, and  _ all I ever thought about was you _ !!!” Rin pulls in a huge, shaking breath, and to Haruka’s horror, his eyes start to grow wet with tears. “And then I came back to race you, to prove to myself that I  _ didn’t need you anymore, _ and what do you do? You pull that  _ fucking _ stunt with me and get my hopes up, and I have to stop myself from kissing you because  _ I already have a soulmate!!! _ You make me sick from hating myself all over again! And it turns out that the person I thought I was betraying was you the whole time?!”

He chokes in another ragged breath, but it turns into a sob part way through, and it makes Haruka’s stomach turn. It hurts, it hurts too much to see Rin this way again, and he doesn’t know how to fix it. He wants to reach out, wants to comfort Rin, tell him the past is the past and he doesn’t need to hurt anymore, but his mind is still caught on one single thing.

“You loved me?” he asks, tentative and hesitant and afraid. Because if Rin means that, if he really  _ does _ love Haruka…

“Of course I did,” Rin whispers, a tear falling down his cheek as the anger seeps out of his voice. His shoulders sag, his hands fall to his sides, and he looks seconds away from toppling forward. “Of course I  _ do _ . How could anyone not?”

Haruka’s heart leaps into his throat. He chokes on a breath.

Rin loves him.

Before he even knows what he’s doing, he takes a step forward, then another, and then he’s pulling Rin against him and crushing their lips together, trying to convey six years’ worth of longing and frustration and sadness and  _ love _ with one simple action. Rin’s lips are warm and soft against his, just the way Haruka had imagined them on particularly rough nights, and he smells like sakura shampoo and the same laundry detergent he’s used since he was twelve. His mouth moves against Haruka’s almost automatically, and his hands come up to rest against Haruka’s back, fingers curling against his shoulders.

It’s messy, and uncoordinated, and scary and unsure and everything Haruka has ever wanted at the same time.

Rin is the first to pull away, gasping in a breath and looking at Haruka with shiny, bright eyes. His cheeks are flushed and his lips are a little red, and his hair somehow looks messier than it had been ten seconds ago, and he’s  _ so, so perfect _ , and Haruka loves him more than anything in the world. He stares into Haruka’s eyes, a billion different emotions flashing across his face, until at last he starts to…

Laugh?

Haruka blinks, confused, as Rin’s laughter echoes around the empty street, shaky and tearful and overjoyed. His eyes are wet again, and his shoulders start to tremble as he pulls Haruka into a bone-crushing hug, his chin resting over Haruka’s shoulder as he turns his face into Haruka’s hair. All of a sudden he’s sobbing while he’s laughing, and it shouldn’t be possible to feel this raw and light and  _ happy _ , but he  _ does _ .

“I always loved you,” Rin cries into Haruka’s neck, his hands clutching Haruka’s shirt as tightly as possible. “I always loved you, Haru, I always wanted it to be you…”

“I know,” Haruka says, feeling tears start to prick at his own eyes as he presses tiny kisses to Rin’s hair. “I know, Rin, I know. I love you, I’m sorry, it’s all going to be okay now. I promise.”

They don’t need to pinky swear this time. Somewhere deep down, in the very core of his soul, he knows that it’s the truth.

* * *

“Will Samezuka miss you?” Haruka asks, pushing the front door to his house open. His other hand is intertwined with Rin’s, has been since they reluctantly pulled apart back on the street, teary-eyed and smiling. They hadn’t spoken as they’d made their way back to Haruka’s house, too busy leaning up to kiss each other every few feet and smile and blush as they pull away. Being this close to Rin, being able to do everything he wants to do without having to worry about how Rin will react is amazing--better than she ever could have pictured.

“I don’t think so,” Rin murmurs as they step inside, pressing his lips to the top of Haruka’s head. “If they do, Sousuke will cover for me.”

“Good,” Haruka says, squeezing Rin’s hand. He never wants to let go, never wants to stop touching Rin, wants to be this close forever. “You’re staying the night, then?”

“If you’ll have me,” Rin agrees, his voice soft, “then of course I will.”

_ Like I’d ever ask you to leave, _ Haruka thinks fondly. If it were up to him, he’d never let Rin leave his side again.

“Come on,” he says, pulling Rin up the stairs by his hand in the direction of his bedroom. He doesn’t want to try anything too intense, not yet--he’s pretty sure his heart can’t take all the excitement crammed into such a short period of time--but he wants to lay next to Rin, like they had in Australia. He wants to hold him to his chest and never let him go, to kiss his face and his hair and his hands, to love him with everything he has, everything he is.

Rin doesn’t protest as Haruka pulls him into the bedroom, pushing him down onto the bed and tumbling over after him. He laughs again, quiet against the still night air, leaning up to press a kiss to Haruka’s jaw.

“I love you,” he says again, eyes sparkling. “I really do, Haru.”

“I know,” Haruka says, reaching down to cup Rin’s cheek in his hand. “And I love you.”

He leans down, pressing their bodies together as he brushes his lips over Rin’s. His hand untangles from Rin’s and makes it way to the back of Rin’s head, catching in his long, unruly hair and tugging slightly.

“Stay with me?” he asks, pressing his forehead against Rin’s.

“Always,” Rin promises reverently. “I’ll never leave you again.”

* * *

When Haruka’s eyes open, he’s met with yet another breathtaking sight.

Rin is asleep beside him, his hair falling in front of his face in messy, wine-red strands. The early morning sun from Haruka’s window shines gently onto his face, making him look almost angelic. His expression is relaxed, peaceful, reminding Haruka of the way he was as a kid, before he left for Australia. He’s got an arm thrown over Haruka’s side, his other resting between his head and the pillow with the string lying on top, and his legs are tangled with Haruka’s.

Haruka smiles, feeling a warm glow in his chest as he watches Rin sleep. The rise and fall of his chest and shoulders is comforting in the same way as watching the ocean go in and out is, his breath even and rhythmic.  _ I wouldn’t mind waking up like this every day, _ he thinks with a smile, reaching over to brush hair out of Rin’s face.

Despite his gentle touch, Rin starts to stir, cracking an eye open and blinking blearily a few times before his gaze comes to focus on Haruka. A small smile of his own crosses his face as he moves his arm to grab onto Haruka’s hand, intertwining their fingers.

“I thought it was a dream,” he whispers hoarsely, squeezing Haruka’s hand in his. “But you’re real, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” Haruka says, nodding against the pillow. “So are you.”

Rin grins and leans in for another kiss (because apparently Haruka isn’t the only one who can’t get enough of those). Their noses brush against each other, and he can’t help but laugh softly as they do.

“So, we have a lot to talk about,” Rin says, a hint of reluctance in his voice. “And as much as I’d like to stay here with you all day, I have to go to practice in the afternoon, so we should probably get it out of the way now.”

“What’s there to talk about?” Haruka asks as Rin pushes himself into a sitting position, copying his actions a second later.

“Well, we’ve got to figure out what it means,” Rin explains, scratching the back of his head awkwardly. “Like, what are we now?”

“We’re soulmates,” Haruka tells him, feeling a rush as he says it. “Didn’t we determine that last night?”

“Yeah, but…” Rin trails off, and Haruka swears he sees a blush starting to form on his cheeks. “I mean, we’re soulmates to each other, but what do we tell everyone else?”

“Oh,” Haruka says, understanding dawning upon him. Of course they can’t show up holding hands and kissing each other every three seconds and not have an explanation to provide the others with should they ask. Sure, soulmates might work when it’s just the two of them, but they’ll sound strange if they say it around their friends.

“I was thinking,” Rin continues, and yep, he’s definitely blushing now. “What about boyfriends? I know it’s not as, uh, serious as soulmates, but it’s not like we’ll ever  _ really _ find a synonym for soulmates, you know?”

“Boyfriends,” Haruka repeats, more to himself than to Rin. It’s not perfect, but it works well enough. He actually kind of likes it, now that Rin’s brought it up.

“Alright,” he agrees at last, nodding. “We can be boyfriends.”

“Great,” Rin sighs, looking relieved.

“Was that all you wanted to talk about?” Haruka asks, raising an eyebrow. Something tells him that finding a label wasn’t exactly the first thing on Rin’s priorities list, but he doesn’t know how to ask.

“Well… I kind of wanted to know…” Rin looks away, embarrassed, murmuring something Haruka can’t quite make out.

“What?” he asks, leaning closer.

“Um,” Rin says, refusing to meet Haruka’s eyes. “How… How long have you known?”

Haruka blinks, confused once again. “Since the first day in Australia,” he says blankly. “I already told you-”

“That’s not really what I meant,” Rin mumbles, his face growing redder by the second. “I mean, how long have you known that you… That you wanted to… How long have you l-loved me?”

_ Oh _ , Haruka thinks, eyes growing wide.  _ I never told him. He said he realized he loved me before he left for Australia, and I never told him that I… _

“I don’t know,” he answers truthfully, looking down at their clasped hands. “For a long time, I suppose. From the moment I met you, I was always… really interested in you, Rin. Always. Somewhere along the way, it must have turned into love. But I didn’t- I couldn’t put it into words until after the relay last year. And it just got more intense the more I thought about it.”

“Oh,” Rin says quietly, trailing off into silence.

“And you?” Haruka asks, nervous. “How long have you known?”

“Since the relay in elementary school,” Rin admits with a soft, sad laugh. “I barely even knew what love was back then, but I just… I felt drawn to you, you know? I mean, I was curious about my soulmate, but I didn’t… I didn’t care about them nearly as much as I cared about you, Haru.”

“And I never cared about anyone as much as I cared about you,” Haruka echoes, a smile gracing his lips. Rin smiles back, soft and loving, and then he’s leaning in and pressing his lips to Haruka’s, and the world melts away once again.

* * *

“Haru!” Rin calls a couple of weeks later, sticking his head into Samezuka’s changing rooms. “Hurry up, slowpoke! You said I could walk you home after practice today, remember?”

“I’m coming,” Haruka says, shoving his towel into his bag and pulling his Iwatobi jacket over his shirt. He’s just starting to turn around, ready to head back to Iwatobi, when he remembers the surprise he’d packed earlier that day.

He sets his bag on one of the benches in the changing room, sticking his hand into the front pocket and digging around until he finds what he’s looking for. Carefully, he produces a spool of thin red string and a pair of scissors, cutting a segment about a meter long before replacing everything back where it came from and zipping the pocket up.

He holds the string against his left pinky and ties the best knot that he can, leaving a tail trailing down towards the floor. Smiling, he admires his handiwork, turning his hand over and over again and watching his makeshift string move with it. It’s not the neatest knot, certainly not as seamless as the red strings, but it’s perfect for him.

He turns towards the door and steps outside, catching Rin’s eye across the room and raising his hand. Rin stares for a second, shocked, then grins back, wide and bright and full of love, and raises his hand as well.

**Author's Note:**

> If you got all the way through this, _thank you so much for reading!!!_ I worked really, really hard on this, and I'm actually really proud of it, so I really hope that you liked it! If you did, feel free to leave comments and kudos, it would make my day!  
> Special thanks to the Rinharu Discord server for helping me figure out logistics, and to Taesha and Sophia for listening to me rant about my writing for weeks on end.  
> [My Tumblr](https://djbunn3.tumblr.com/%22)  
> [Rebloggable Link to Strings](https://djbunn3.tumblr.com/post/181226594200/strings)


End file.
